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CLOUD AND SILVER 

E . V. LUCAS 



By E. V. LUCAS 

More Wanderings in London 

Cloud and Silver 

The Vermilion Box 

The Hausfrau Rampant 

Landmarks 

Listener's Lure 

Mr. Ingleside 

Over Bemerton's 

Loiterer's Harvest 

One Day and Another 

Fireside and Sunshine 

Character and Comedy 

Old Lamps for New 

The Hambledon Men 

The Open Road 

The Friendly Town 

Her Infinite Variety — 

Good Company — 

The Gentlest Art 

The Second Post 

A Little of Everything 

Harvest Home 

Variety Lane 

The Best of Lamb 

The Life of Charles Lamb 

A Swan and Her Friends 

A Wanderer in Venice 

A Wanderer in Paris 

A Wanderer in London 

A Wanderer in Holland 

A Wanderer in Florence 

Highways and Byways in Sussex 

Anne's Terrible Good Nature 

The Slowcoach 

and 
The Pocket Edition of the Works of 

Charles Lamb: i. Miscellaneous Prose; 

II. Elia; in. Children's Books; iv. 

Poems and Plays; v. and vi. Letters. 



CLOUD ana; SILVER 

eV V. LUCAS 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



^^' 



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Copyright, 1916, 
By George H. Doran Company 



PRINTED jpsr THE UJflPCED STATES OF AMERICA 




OCT d3 iSiS 



^GI.A446004 



CONTENTS 



ON BELLONA'S HEM— 





PAGE 


Allies to the Exd . 


11 


My First Battle-field 


. 16 


The Marne after the Battle . 


-. 23 


Wayside Notes — 




I. Gratitude ..... 


;. 42 


II. The Mistake . . . > 


. 43 


III. Repentance .... 


. 46 


Laughter in the Trenches 


. 49 


The Sinking of the U 29 . 


. 55 


The Real Hero of the War . 


f. 59 


VARIOUS ESSAYS— 




Of Bareheadedness . . .j . 


. 62 


Of Silver Paper . . ., 


. 66 


Or Being Somebody Else . . .: 


. 70 


Of Persons that we Envy 


. 75 


Of Good Ale ..... 


. 79 


V 





Contents 

VARIOUS BSSAYS— continued ^^^^ 

Of the Best Stoeies 84 

Or Monocles ....... 90 

Of Slang — English and American ... 94 
Of a Bonzer Australian Poet . . . .101 

Of the Crummles Code . . . . .110 

Of Accuracy 114 

Of Deception ....... 119 

Of Plans for one more Spring .... 124 

"R.C." 129 

The Two Ladies 134 



ONCE UPON A TIME— 










I. The Two Perfumes 








141 


II. The Dog Violets . 








143 


III. The Devout Lover 








144 


IV. Wireless 








146 


V. The Vaseful 








149 


VI. Ups and Downs . 








151 


VII. The Alien . 








154 


VIII. Breathing Space . 








. 157 


IX. Responsibility 








. 158 


X. Man's Limitations 








. 160 


vi 











Contents 



ONCE UPON A TIME— continued 



« \^ JJi KJ 


JL V^XI J.X. J. J.J.TJL J_i (^\^#f l/HC wt/ 




PAGE 


XL 


"East, West, Home's Best" . 


162 


XII. 


Waste . 




164 


XIII. 


Nature 




166 


XIV. 


The Rxhje . 




166 


XV. 


The Uses of Criticism 




167 


XVI. 


JoixTs IX the Armour 




168 


XVII. 


The Resolute Spirit 




170 


^VIII. 


Ik Extremis 




174 


XIX. 


Progress 




176 


XX. 


Moses . . ... i 


►; i», • 


. 176 



IN A NEW MEDIUM— 
The Old Country; or. Writ in Wax 



180 



Tii 



CLOUD AND SILVER 



CLOUD AND SILVER 



ON BELLONA'S HEM 

"allies to the end 

{December 191Jf) 

WE were sitting in a little restaurant in the 
Gay City — which is not a gay city any 
more^ but a city of dejection, a city that knows 
there is a war going on and not so long since 
could hear the guns. There are, however, corners 
where, for the moment, contentment or, at any 
rate, an interlude of mirth, is possible, and this 
little restaurant is one of them. Well, we were 
sitting there waiting for coffee, the room (for it 
was late) now empty save for the table behind 
me, where two elderly French bourgeois and a 
middle-aged woman were seated, when suddenly 
the occupant of the chair which backed into mine 
and had been backing into it so often during the 
evening that I had punctuated my eating with 
comments on other people's clumsy bulkiness — 
suddenly, as I say, this occupant, turning com- 
pletely round, forced his face against mine and, 
cigarette in hand, asked me for a light. I could 
see nothing but face — a waste of plump ruddy 
11 



Cloud and Silver 

face set deep between vast shoulders, a face 
garnished with grey beard and moustache, and 
sparkling moist eyes behind highly magnifying 
spectacles. Very few teeth and no hair. But 
the countenance as a whole radiated benignancy 
and enthusiasm; and one thing, at any rate, was 
clear, and that was that none of my resentment 
as to the restlessness of the chair had been 
telepathed. 

Would I do him the honour of giving him a 
light? he asked, the face so close to mine that 
we were practically touching. I reached out for 
a match. Oh no, he said, not at all; he desired 
the privilege of taking the light from my cigarette, 
because I was an Englishman and it was an 

honour to meet me, and — and "Vive I'Angle- 

terre!" This was all very strange and disturbing 
to me; but we live in stirring times, and nothing 
ever will be the same again. So I gave him the 
light quite calmly, not forgetting to say, "Vive 
la France!'* as I did so; whereupon he grasped 
my hand and thanked me fervently for the 
presence of the English army in his country, 
the credit for which I endeavoured fruitlessly 
to disclaim, and then all the members of each 
party stood up, bowed to each other severally 
and collectively, and resumed our own lives 
again. 

But the incident had been so unexpected that 

I, at any rate, could not be quite normal just 

yet, for I could not understand why, out of four 

of us, all English, and one a member of the 

(12) 



Allies to the End 

other sex, so magnetic to Frenchmen, I should 
have been selected either as the most typical 
or the most likely to be cordial — I who only 
a week or so ago was told reflectively by a 
student of men, gazing steadfastly upon me, 
that my destiny must be to be more amused 
by other people than to amuse them. Especially, 
too, as earlier in the evening there had been 
two of our soldiers — real men — in khaki in the 
room. Yet there it was: I, a dreary civilian, 
had been carefully selected as the truest repre- 
sentative of Angleterre and all its bravery and 
chivalry, even to the risk of dislocation of the 
perilously short neck of the speaker. 

It was therefore my turn to behave, and I 
whispered to the waiter to fill three more glasses 
with his excellent Fine de la maison (not the 
least remarkable in Paris) and place them on 
the next table, with our compliments. This he 
did, and the explosion of courtesy and felicita- 
tions that followed was terrific. It flung us all 
to our feet, bowing and smiling. We clinked 
glasses, each of us clinking six others; we said 
"Vive la France!" and "Vive I'Angleterre." We 
tried to assume expressions consonant with the 
finest types of our respective nations. I felt 
everything that was noblest in the British char- 
acter rushing to my cheeks; everything that was 
most gallant and spirited in the French tempera- 
ment suffused the face of my new friend, until 
I saw nothing for him but instant apoplexy. 
Meanwhile he grasped my hand in his, which was 

(13) 



Cloud and Silver 

very puffy and warm, and again thanked me 
personally for all that "ces braves Anglais" had 
done to save Paris and la belle France. 

Down we all sat again, and I whispered to 
our party that perhaps this was enough and 
we had better creep away. But there was more 
in store. Before the bill could be made out — 
never a very swift matter at this house — I caught 
sight of a portent and knew the worst. I saw 
a waiter entering the room with a tray on which 
was a bottle of champagne and seven glasses. 
My heart sank, for if there is one thing I cannot 
do, it is to drink the sweet champagne so dear 
to the French bourgeois palate. And after the 
old fine, not before it! To the French mind 
these irregularities are nothing; but to me, 
to us. . . . 

There however it was, and, in a moment, the 
genial enthusiast was again on his feet. Would 
we not join them, he asked, in drinking a glass 
of champagne to the good health and success 
of the Allies? Of course we would. Instantly 
we were all standing again, all clinking glasses 
again, all again crying "Vive la France!" "Vive 
I'Angleterre !" to which we added, "A bas les 
Boches!" all shaking hands and looking our best, 
exactly as before. But this time there was no 
following national segregation, but we sat down 
in three animated groups and talked as though 
a ban against social intercourse in operation for 
years had suddenly been lifted. The room 
buzzed. We were introduced one by one to 
(14) 



Allies to the End 

Madame, who not only was my friend's wife, 
but, he told us proudly, helped in his business, 
whatever that might be; and Madame, on closer 
inspection, turned out to be one of the capable 
but somewhat hard French women of her class, 
with a suggestion somewhere about the mouth that 
she had doubts as to whether the champagne had 
been quite a necessary expense — whether things 
had not gone well enough without it, and my con- 
tribution of iine were the fitting conclusion. Still, 
she made a brave show at cordiality. Then we 
were introduced to the other gentleman, Madame's 
cousin, who, we were told with pride, had a son 
at the Front; on hearing which, we shook hands 
with him again, and then gradually set about 
the task of disentanglement, and at last got into 
our coats and made our adieux. 

When I had shaken his feather-bed hand for 
the last time my new friend gave me his card. 
It lies before me as I write, and I do not mean to 
part with it : 



BAPTISTE GRIMAUD 

Delegue Cantonal 

9a Place Gambetta 
Pompes Funebres 



Well, if ever I come to die in Paris I know who 
shall bury me. I would not let any one else do it 
for the world. Warm hearts are not so common 
as all that ! 

(15) 



MY FIRST BATTLE-FIELD 

(December 1914-) 

THERE was a battle-field, I was told, with a 
ruined village near it, at Meaux, about thirty 
miles from Paris, and I decided to make every 
effort to see it. The preliminaries, they said, 
would be difficult, but only patience was needed — 
patience and one's papers all in order. It would 
be necessary to go to the War Bureau, beside the 
Invalides. 

I went one afternoon to the War Bureau beside 
the Invalides. I rang the bell, and a smiling 
French soldier opened the door. Within were long 
passages and other smiling French soldiers in little 
knots guarding the approaches, all very bureau- 
cratic. The head of the first knot referred me to 
the second knot; the head of the second referred 
me to a third. The head of this knot, which 
guarded the approach to the particular military 
mandarin whom I needed or thought I needed, 
smiled more than any of them, and, having heard 
my story, said that that was certainly the place to 
obtain leave. But it was unwise and even impos- 
sible to go by any other way than road, as the 
railway was needed for soldiers and munitions of 
war, and therefore I must bring my chauffeur 
(16) 



My First Battle-Field 

with me, and his papers too would need to be in 
order. 

My chauffeur ? I possessed no such thing. Nec- 
essary then to provide myself with a chauffeur at 
once. Out I went in a fusillade of courtesies and 
sought a chauffeur. After countless rebuffs I 
hailed a taxi, driven by a vast grey hearthrug, and 
told him my difficulties, and he at once offered to 
drive me anywhere and made no bones about the 
distance whatever. So it was arranged that he 
should come for me on the morrow — say Tuesday, 
at a quarter to eleven, and we would then get 
through the preliminaries, lunch comfortably by 
noon and be off and away. So do hearthrugs talk 
with foreigners — light-heartedly and confident. But 
Mars disposes. For when we reached the Bureau 
at a minute after eleven the next morning the 
smiling janitor told us we were too late. Too 
late at eleven? Yes, the office in question was 
closed between eleven and two; we must return 
at two. "But the day will be over," I said; 
"the light will have gone. Another day 
wasted !" 

Nothing on earth can crystallise and solidify so 
swiftly and implacably as the French official face. 
At these words his smile vanished in a second. 
He was not angry or threatening — merely granite. 
Those were the rules, and how could any one 
question them? At two, he repeated; and again 
I left the building, this time not bowing quite so 
effusively, but suppressing a thousand criticisms 

(17) 



Cloud and Silver 

which migHt have been spoken were the French 
not our allies. 

Three hours to kill in a city where everything 
was shut. No Louvre, no Carnavalet. However, 
the time went, chiefly over lunch, and at two we 
were there again, the hearthrug and I, and were 
shown into a waiting-room where far too many 
other persons had already assembled. To me this 
congestion seemed deplorable; but the hearthrug 
merely grinned. It was a new experience to him 
— and his metre was registering all the time. We 
waited, I suppose, forty minutes, and then came 
our turn, and we were led to a little room where 
sat a typical French oflficer at a table, white mous- 
tached and in uniform with blue and red about it. 
I bowed, he bowed, the hearthrug grovelled. I 
explained my need, and he replied instantly that I 
had come to the wrong place; the right place was 
the Conciergerie. 

Another rebuff! In England I might have in- 
formed him that it was one of his own idiotic 
men who had told me otherwise, but of what use 
would that be in France? In France a thing is or 
is not, and there is no getting round it if it is not. 
French officials are portcullises, and they drop as 
suddenly and as effectively. Knowing this, so far 
from showing resentment or irritation, I bowed 
and made my thanks as though I had come for 
no other purpose than a dose of expensive frus- 
tration; and again we left the Bureau. 

I re-entered the taxi, which, judging by the 
metre, I should shortly have completely paid for, 
(18) 



My First Eattle-Field 

and we hurtled away (for the hearthrug was a 
demon driver) to Paris's Scotland Yard. Here 
were more passages, more little rooms, more in- 
flexible officials. I had bowed to half a dozen and 
explained my errand before at last the right one 
was reached, and him the hearthrug grovelled to 
again and called "Mon Colonel." He sat at a 
table in a little room, and beside him, all on the 
same side of the table, sat three civilians. On 
the wall behind was a map of France. What 
they did all day, I wondered, and how much they 
were paid for it; for we were the only clients, 
and the suggestion of the place was one of anec- 
dotage and persiflage rather than toil. They acted 
with the utmost unanimity. First **Mon Colonel'* 
scrutinised my passport, and then the others, in 
turn, scrutinised it. What did I want to go to 
Meaux for? I replied that my motive was pure 
curiosity. Did I know it was a very dull town? 
I wanted to see the battle-field. That would be 
triste. Yes, I knew, but I was interested. "Mon 
Colonel" shrugged and wrote on a piece of paper 
and passed the paper to the first civilian, who 
wrote something else and passed it on, and finally 
the last one getting it, discovered a mistake in the 
second civilian's writing, and the mistake had to be 
initialled by all four, each making great play with 
one of those hand blotters without which French 
official life would be a blank, and at last the 
precious document was handed to me, and I was 
really free to start. But it was now dark. 

(19)' 



Cloud and Silver 

The road from Mcaiix leaves the town by a hill, 
crosses a canal, and then mounts and winds, and 
mounts again, and dips and mounts, between 
fields of stubble, with circular straw-stacks as 
their only occupant. The first intimation of any- 
thing untoward, besides the want of life, was, on 
the distant hill, the spire of the little white village 
of Barcy, which surely had been damaged. As 
one drew nearer it was clear that not only had 
the spire been damaged, but that the houses had 
been damaged too. The place seemed empty and 
under a ban. Why from yet far away one village 
should look cursed and another prosperous, I can- 
not say; but this one suggested only calamity, 
and as one drew nearer its fate became more 
certain. 

I stopped the car outside, at the remains of a 
burned shed, and walked along the desolate main 
street. All the windows were broken; the walls 
were indented in little holes or perforated by big 
ones. The roofs were in ruins. Here was the 
post office ; it was now half demolished and boarded 
up. There was the inn; it was now empty and 
forlorn. Half the great clock face leant against 
a wall. Every one had fled — it was a "deserted 
village" with a vengeance: nothing left but a few 
fowls. Everything was damaged; but the church 
had suffered most. Half of the shingled spire 
was destroyed; most of the roof and the great 
bronze bell lay among the debris on the ground. 
It is as though the enemy's policy was to intimi- 
date the simple folk through the failure of their 
(20) 



My First Battle-Field 

supernatural stronghold. "If the church is so 
pregnable, then what chance have we?" — that is 
the question which it was perhaps hoped would be 
asked. Where, I wondered, were those villagers 
now, and what were the chances of the rebuilding 
of these old peaceful homes, so secure and placid 
only four months ago ? 

And then I walked to the battle-field a few 
hundred yards away, and only too distinguishable 
as such by the little cheap tricolours on the hastily- 
dug graves among the stubble and the ricks. 
Hitherto I had always associated such ricks with 
landscapes by Monet, and the sight of one had 
recalled the other; but henceforward when I see 
them I shall think of these poor pathetic graves 
sprinkled among them, at all kinds of odd angles 
to each other — for evidently the holes were dug 
parallel with the bodies beside them — with each a 
little wooden cross hastily tacked together, and 
on some the remnants of the soldier's coat or cap, 
or even boots, and on some the red, white, and 
blue. As far as one could distinguish, these little 
crosses broke the view; some against the sky-line, 
for it is hilly about here, others against the dark 
soil. 

It was a day of lucid November sunshine. The 
sky was blue and the air mild. A heavy dew lay 
on the earth. Not a sound could be heard; not 
a leaf fluttered. No sign of life. We (for the 
hearthrug had left his car and joined me) we 
were alone, save for the stubble and the ricks and 
the wooden crosses and the little flags. How near 

(21) 



Cloud and Silver 

the dead seemed! much nearer than in any 
cemetery. 

Suddenly a distant booming sounded; then an- 
other and another. It was the guns at either 
Soissons or Rheims — the first thunder of battle I 
had ever heard. 

Thus I too^ non-combatant as Anno-Domini 
forces me to be, learned something of war — a very 
little, it is true, but enough to make a difference 
in reading the letters from the trenches or meet- 
ing a wounded soldier or a Belgian refugee. For 
I had gained a permanent background for their 
tragedies. 



(22) 



THE MARNE AFTER THE BATTLE 

IN the destruction of the Marne villages there 
was much caprice. This one is destroyed: 
that unharmed. This one, such as Revigny, 
which is, however, bigger than a village, is care- 
fully divided into two halves, one left as it was 
and one ruined. Vitry-le-Fran9ois, a large market 
town on the great canal that eventually joins the 
Rhine, was only looted; Sermaize-les-Bains, an 
inland watering-place, was almost totally de- 
stroyed. At Heiltz-le-Maurupt, partly no doubt to 
show with what skill they could control their 
incendiarism, the Germans carefully isolated a 
Protestant chapel. 

Only one house, and that a large farm useful 
to the enemy, on the outskirts, remains at Vassin- 
court, a high-standing village where hard fighting 
occurred. Many were the killed, and the graves 
are so shallow that it is now far from sanitary. 
At the Cafe des Ruines, a mere shed which has 
sprung up, is pinned to the wall a piece of canvas : 
a relic of poor Pegoud's aeroplane sent to the 
proprietor by his soldier son. Another village 
almost wholly destroyed is Maurupt. And then, 
close by these, you find quiet villages that are as 
they were, except for a brooding anxiety. Here 

(22) 



Cloud and Silver 

the Germans destroyed nothing, but merely took 
horses and food. In some cases, of course, the 
burning may have been disciplinary ; in some cases 
the shelling was part of a genuine battle ; but often 
enough the escape of one place and the destruc- 
tion of another was due to mere differences of 
character in the enemy's commanding officers — this 
one being humane and that brutal, just as men 
may be in ordinary daily life. 

The churches have suffered very seriously, not 
without reason. Sometimes guns were mounted 
on them; often they were the scenes of bloody 
hand-to-hand conflict; while as coigns of observa- 
tion their towers were naturally undesired by the 
invaders. There was therefore ground for their 
destruction. In many cases also they were as 
much hit by French as German shells, notably at 
Huiron, near Vitry-le-Fran9ois, which stands, like 
so many Marne villages, on a high watershed. 
Huiron church is now just a husk. Over the door 
is a pretty sculptured saint, unharmed, as is so 
often the case in these church ruins. At Revigny 
the tower is smashed and the bell lies in fragments 
on the floor, but enough of the edifice remains for 
worship. 

Here and there one picks up stories of privation 
and fortitude, true enough but almost past belief. 
In one high-standing village, now ruined, for in- 
stance, was a man who, at the approach of the 
Germans, hurried to the forest of the Argonne 
(24) 



The Marne After the Battle 

with his dog. There he hid for three days with 
nothing to eat^ watching the sky glow red with 
the flames of his own and other villages, and hear- 
ing the incessant guns. Then he ate his dog. 
Three days later he returned. He looks just like 
other men. 

At Maurupt is a small boy who, wandering in 
a wood just after the battle of the Marne, came 
upon a wounded German. What did he do ? What 
should he have done.^* What would you or I have 
done? I cannot say. But the small boy returned 
swiftly to his home, obtained a chopper, and, 
saying not a word to any one, again sought the 
wood. . . . He is now a hero. If you go to 
Maurupt he will be pointed out to you. 

There are no young men in the villages; no 
men of middling age; only old men, women, girls, 
and children. The women do the work — drive the 
carts, control the harvesters, the mechanical reap- 
ers and binders (and the name of Filter is prob- 
ably better known than that of Poincare in this 
district), milk, plough, sow. Were it not for the 
children, there would be no relief to the prevalent 
adult expression, which is sombre or resigned; and, 
indeed, acceptance of disaster may be said to be the 
new rural spirit, if the word spirit can be applied 
to such a negative state. September 6-12, 1914, 
left an ineradicable melancholy, so swift was the 
onrush, so terrible the rage, so irreparable and 
gratuitous the injury. 

(26) 



Cloud and Silver 

Is it to be wondered at that many of the old 
women confess to an upheaval of their faith? 
Why, they ask, should such calamity have come 
upon them? What had they done to deserve it? 
One old lady gives it out that she will trouble 
Joan of Arc, whose statue is in her village church, 
with prayers no more. "She has abandoned us," is 
her complaint. 

During the harvesting season regiments were 
sometimes billeted on villages for a month at a 
time, so that the soldiers might help in getting 
in the crops. For crops are needed not much 
less than the death of Germans. One of these 
soldiers was himself a farmer in the Midi. On his 
own distant farm were just two women, one very 
old, and his fields were lying idle with none to 
reap or carry. Meanwhile from dawn to dusk he 
harvested for a stranger. 

The ruins have a strangely foreign, un-French, 
appearance — due very largely to the chimney 
stacks which resisted the fire and for the most 
part still stand. They make the total effect one 
of a dead city of monoliths. Often no attempt 
has been made to remove any of the debris. Bed- 
steads twisted into odd shapes by the heat are 
very common objects. Bicycles similarly deformed 
are rarer, but one sees them, and almost always 
the isolated kitchen range, rusted and gaping but 
holding its own with a fine independence and de- 
termination, is visible. It seems to say that what- 
(26) 



The Marne After the Battle 

ever else the Germans may have done they could 
not break the indomitable spirit of the French 
cuisine ! 

Very little real rebuilding has yet been done — 
for who is to rebuild? Rebuilding needs strong 
men, and strong men are wanted more seriously 
elsewhere. Strong men are with their "Grand- 
pere." But the French Engineers have put up 
wooden and tiled abris here and there, and the 
young men of the Society of Friends have been 
busy too; while hundreds of families still live in 
their cellars beneath a sloping roof. The huts built 
by the Friends are very simple: two or three 
rooms at most, with a roof of tiles or carton. The 
planks are of poplar, as they ought to be in the 
land of poplars: a tough fibrous wood, little used 
in England, but which in France is the favourite 
for sabots. Centuries ago, some one tells me, the 
Romans made shields of it. The Friends provide 
the labour and the cars; the French Government 
give the materials; but wood shortage is continual, 
since who is to cut it? 

• ••••• 

The Society of Friends have been and are busy 
not only in hut-building but in all kinds of recon- 
stitution: distributing seeds, chickens, rabbits, 
clothes, teaching the children, nursing, and so 
forth. For the Sinistres, as the burned-out popu- 
lace are called, naturally often lose all, and they 
need every kind of help in beginning again. How 
such stalwart young fellows in their grey uniforms 

.(27), 



Cloud and Silver 

first struck the simple and still half-dazed peas- 
antry of the Marne, I do not know: but the subtle- 
ties of English sects and pacifism could not have 
been an open book. Watching several of the 
Friends at work on a shed, a cure put to me the 
very natural question, "Are all Englishmen car- 
penters ?" 

The Friends' main field of labour in the Marne 
lies between Chalons-sur-Marne, Bar-le-duc, and 
Vitry-le-Fran9ois. Sermaize-les-Bains, from which 
most of the operations have been directed, is in 
the midst of the triangle formed by these towns. 
Chalons is the great military centre, and there 
the Friends have a maternity hospital, and from 
Chalons their cars dash into Rheims to dare the 
shells and bring away patients. Later, I imagine 
the Friends will penetrate far into the Meuse and 
carry on their good work there. 



Vitry-le-Fran9ois, named after Fran9ois I, must 
be one of the neatest provincial towns in the world. 
Built by a monarch of orderly mind, though some- 
what irregular habits (as one Diane de Poictiers 
could relate), it fulfils a rectangular plan. In 
the middle of it is a square; within that is a 
smaller square of lime trees, whose branches have 
been severely cut into cubes; and in the middle of 
that is a fountain. From this fountain radiate the 
four principal streets. 

'(28) 



The Marne After the Battle 

The fountain itself^ rather daringly in such 
close proximity to the real article, represents the 
Marne, that great and beautiful and very green 
and now poignantly historic river on which Vitry 
is situated. And the symbol of the Marne is, 
naturally enough in France, a bronze lady: a feat 
of imagery which, since the stream can be seen 
only a few yards away, should have the effect of 
turning the youth of the town either into poets 
or, by way of protest, realists. It suggests also 
that some limit of distance from the fact should 
be set upon symbolic sculpture. There, however, 
she stands, this bronze lady, not much more motion- 
less than — especially on Sundays and in the eve- 
ning — stand the multitude of anglers on her river's 
actual banks. For Vitry-le-Fran9ois fishes with a 
unanimity and application such as I never saw 
before. Every one fishes: old women fish; young 
women; mothers with their children; girls; boys; 
elderly men; the barber with the strabismus who 
is so anxious to learn English; the tall man with 
one leg who manages his bicycle so cleverly: all 
fish. After five o'clock they are as sure to be by 
the river as the bronze lady is sure to be in the 
centre of the square. But, most of all, the soldiers 
fish. Vitry is packed with soldiers, and every 
one has a rod. When work is done they hold their 
rods over the river with a pacific content that for 
the moment reduces Guillaumism to a dream, a 
myth. But for that dread menace they would 
not be there in such numbers, it is true, yet how 

(29) 



Cloud and Silver 

can one fear the worst so long as they angle, these 
warriors, with such calm and intensity? 

No one, so far as I know, ever catches anything ; 
but what of that? It is notorious that fishing and 
catching fish can be totally opposed pursuits. Noth- 
ing ever discourages or depresses the Vitry enthusi- 
asts. They fish on; they smoke on; they exchange 
jests and hopes. The barber, with his white 
jacket and his ragged beard, who for the most part 
has one eye on his float and the other on the street 
whence would come running the boy who lathers 
the customers, may now and then examine his hook 
with a gesture of surprise, but he is not really 
concerned to find no fish squirming there. Simi- 
larly, at intervals, every soldier withdraws his 
line to replenish his bait or move his float; but 
they too are not down-hearted. I say float, for 
it is wholly that kind of fishing. No flies, no 
reels even; nothing but a rod, a piece of string, a 
float, two split shots, a hook, and some quite super- 
fluous lure. A few more imaginative minds add a 
landing-net. I have sometimes wondered what 
would happen if a fish with a sense of fun did 
once permit itself to be drawn from the river. 
Would they run as from a sea-serpent? I imagine 
them, en masse, soldiers and civilians, old and 
young, stampeding from the banks. "A fish! 
A fish!" 

Vitry has several inns, but only two that count, 
and one of these, the older and more stately look- 
(30) 



The Marne After the Battle 

ing, does not deserve to. It is ancient and mould- 
ering, and nobody cares. You ring the bell, to no 
purpose. You ring again and again, and then dis- 
cover that it is broken, has been broken for years. 
"La sonnette est cassee/* you remark severely. 
"Oui/' the patronne acquiesces, "elle ne marche 
pas." At this hotel nothing marches. In the 
stable are no horses; in the coach-house is one 
omnibus with three wheels and one with two. 
Progress not only has passed it by but has not even 
glanced at it. 

Vitry has also several cafes, one of which, by 
the canal towpath, where the weary horses plod, 
bravely calls itself the "Cafe de Navigation." 
As for the others, they are of the regular pattern 
— "de Commerce," "de Paris," and so forth. It also 
has many shops, for it is a centre of an agricul- 
tural district, and farmers and farmers' wives — 
chiefly farmers' wives nowadays — rely upon it for 
the necessities of life. And mention of the shops 
reminds me of an experience in Vitry which I 
shall ever cherish, for I too, finding myself one 
day in want of a necessity of life, entered the chief 
ironmonger's and laid m}^ need before the assistant. 
A corkscrew? Assuredly. .He had all kinds. He 
displayed first one and then another, remarking 
that the second was "plus serieux." It was, of 
course, the more serious corkscrew that I bought. 
"Great sensible land of France," I said to myself, 
as I bore away this precious purchase, "where the 
words 'serious' and 'corkscrew' can be so naturally 

(31) 



Cloud and Silver 

allied!" For the rest of my life corkscrews will 
fall into the two divisions — serious and the 
reverse. 

In a provincial paper, Le Repuhlicain, published 
at Vitry, I find the following fine and tender letter 
written by a French soldier to a little girl who 
had sent him a gift. It has great and very French 
qualities, I think: 

Du FRONT, le 16 mai 1915 
Ma chere petite fille 

Je m'empresse de repondre a votre charmante 
lettre qui m'a procure bien des emotions. 

Par la meme occasion je vous accuse reception 
du colis annonce. 

Votre petite lettre m'arrivant juste apres le 
terrible assaut que nous venons de subir et au cours 
duquel nous avons eu la douleur de perdre notre 
capitaine, m'a encore plus impressionne. 

Qui, chere petite fille, vous etes encore bien 
jeune pour comprendre la vie, mais conservez cette 
lettre et dans quelques annees lorsque vous serez 
plus reflechie, vous pourrez comprendre combien il 
m'etait doux de retrouver en vous les paroles et 
baisers de mes enfants que j 'attends depuis plus 
de 10 mois. 

Oui, c'est tres bien de votre part cette genereuse 
idee suggeree par un professeur devouee qui sait 
apprecier les craintes etles esperances d'un soldat 
sans nouvelles de sa famille et qui s'applique a le 
consoler. 

(32) 



The JVIarne After the Battle 

Peut-etre aiirai-je un jour le bonheur de vous 
rencontrer^ car les Iiasards de la vie sont si grands. 
Ce jour-la vous pourrez etre assuree de trouver 
non pas un ingrat mais un second pere. 

Ma chere petite fille, mille fois merci ainsi qu'a 
votre professeur et ce sera avec plus d'ardeur 
encore et de bravoure que je lutterai pour la libera- 
tion de notre chere France. 

Esperons que ce beau jour n'est plus loin et 
recevez ma chere petite fille les meilleurs baisers 
d'un artilleur. 

Signe: Jules Malaises 

Like all provincial French towns, Vitry has its 
share of clubs. I made a list of them for sheer 
pleasure in reading their friendly names. Here 
are some: Les Disciples de Progres; Veloce Club 
Vitryat; Societe des Combattants de 1870-71; 
Societe des Sciences et des Arts; Les Fraternels 
anciens Sous-officiers ; Jeunesse Republicaine 
Vitryate; and Societe des Veterans de Terre et de 
Mer. Can you not see them on Club nights ? The 
animation of it all: the jokes, the laughter. I 
should like to peep in at the Combattants of 
1870-71! white-moustached old fellows, some with 
only one arm or leg. And the veterans of the 
earth and the sea should be worth a visit. 

The Germans overflowed Vitry early in the war. 
The Mayor and Corporation fled, but the cure, a 
venerable and imposing white-haired figure, re- 
mained. I heard him tell the story in a sermon to 

(33) 



Cloud and Silver 

the militaires, and it lost nothing in his rhetoric. 
The town would have been burnt but for the vast 
numbers of German wounded in it. A certain 
amount of looting was done, but not much. The 
Vitry people on the whole do not give the Huns 
such a bad character. 

It was at this special service in Vitry's great 
church that I felt the power of music as never 
before. Suddenly the first notes of a solo were 
heard in a tender, vibrant tenor. They broke on 
the ear without warning and came from I knew 
not where, but by moving my place — I was lean- 
ing against a pillar — I saw, high up, in the organ 
loft, the singer, a French soldier in khaki. He 
sang not only exquisitely but so movingly that it 
was almost pain, and yet such pain as one would 
not forgo. Hoping it might go on for ever, one 
trembled lest each note was the last. It was so 
beautiful that one feared to meet any other eye. 
... A little later he sang again. The first solo 
was a psalm, set to some wistful cadences; the 
second was a hymn, a long hymn enumerating the 
mercies of the Lord. Each verse began with the 
words "Souvenez-vous .^" Did we remember? the 
singer asked us, in tones so gentle, so beseeching, 
and yet so rich that they touched chords that I did 
not know were hidden in me ; and again the beauty 
of it was almost too much to bear. For the first 
time I realised that the voice is also an instru- 
ment. . . . Half the church was in tears. We 
(34) 



The Marne After the Battle 

heard later that the singer was a famous operatic 
star mobilise. 

Sermaize, once an inland watering-place, — 
where the Friends have their head-quarters, housed 
oddly enough in an old casino, a disused petits- 
chevaux table serving as the director's desk, — is so 
ruined, and with such wantonness, that it would 
be an ideal spot in which (were it not that that 
building must be on conquered soil) to erect the 
pavilion where at the end of the war the repre- 
sentatives of the Powers might meet to confer as 
to terms of peace. With such surroundings our 
English tendency to forgive and forget could not 
but be interrupted. It would also, I think, be 
interesting and valuable if the demolished village 
of Vassincourt were retained exactly as it is and 
the new village erected at a little distance. Then 
for all time the methods of the Germans in a 
harmless agricultural district would be on record. 

One of the occupants of a Friends' hut who 
was imprisoned during the terrible week of the 
Marne battle had purchased some time before a 
cofFre fort in whose impregnability she had so much 
confidence that she thought of the burning of her 
house comparatively undismayed. When, how- 
ever, liberty came again and she hurried to the 
ruins to extract the safe and its contents, she 
found that it had played her false and everything 
inside it was incinerated. Among the things were 
various documents reduced to ash, and a jewel- 

(35) 



Cloud and Silver 

case. The jewel-case she now displays to favoured 
visitors. It has nothing but its blackened treasures 
in it;, but they are treasures none the less: — a ring 
with her father's hair^ now dust; a ring with her 
grandmother's hair, also dust ; a locket given her by 
her great lady (she had been a domestic servant) ; 
a brooch which had been her sister's; and so forth. 
The fire did not melt them; it merely turned them 
to dross. As she handles them tenderly one by 
one, the tears roll softly down her cheeks. 

All relics of the fighting have to be taken to the 
nearest mairies by order of the Prefect of the 
Marne; but it is a rule that is not too slavishly 
obeyed. The Mayor of fitrepy showed me many 
curiosities, including a vessel used by the Germans 
in gassing. After the enemy had passed and done 
their worst, great quantities of their inflammable 
gelatine disks were found here and flung into the 
neighbouring river Sault. They are square, the 
size of a quarter postage stamp, and as thick as 
sixpence. First, soldiers would pass down the 
streets flinging bombs through the windows, and 
then others would follow to throw in handfuls of 
these little fiendish squares to complete the con- 
flagration. The Mayor led me to a field behind his 
new home and showed me the gun positions, and 
also a great black circle in the grass, covered with 
cinders. These, he said, were the remains of a 
funeral pyre of German bodies over which pitch 
was poured, there being no time to bury them. 
It is strange to hold in one's hand a piece of this 
(36) 



The Marne After the Battle 

slag — concentrated residuum of I know not how 
many of the foe. 

• ••••• 

Every one is, of course, a souvenir-collector — 
in spite of the mairies. On most mantelpieces is a 
French 75 shell-case, and few men are without 
some pocket curiosity to display. The most inter- 
esting thing shown to me was a little fragment of 
red glass — picked up on the floor of Rheims 
Cathedral. One of the oddest German relics which 
I saw was a tiny book, all rain-stained and torn. 
It contained a series of rhymed protestations of 
affection and fidelity suitable to be written on post 
cards and sent back to Gretchen. 

In a wooden hut erected by the Friends lives 
an old woman to whose house came three huge and 
terrible Germans demanding food. They took all 
she had, chiefly potatoes; but even as they did so 
all three were killed. She now sits hour after hour 
at her door and sews ; while under the potato patch 
in her little garden those three Germans lie. 

In another of the Friends' huts is an old woman 
who was imprisoned by the Germans for two or 
three days during the battle of the Marne, but, as 
she proudly records, they made no impression on 
her spirit. Not they! Not she! While under 
lock and key she noticed with anger a German 
soldier cleaning a coffee-cup with a lady's chemise 
of exquisite texture — probably snatched from the 
neighbouring chateau which they had carefully 

(37) 



Cloud and Silver 

burned. Some time later the German, who could 
speak French, asked her if she would like a cup 
of coffee. "Have some coffee, grandmother?" were 
his words. "Yes — if the chemise is clean," she 
retorted. She tells this story with immense relish. 

During the summer of 1915 great supplies of 
crosses were prepared for the graves of the fallen, 
both French and German, in the department of 
the Marne. The German graves are marked by 
a railing and cross of silver birch, with the dead 
man's number affixed. The French graves have 
a more enduring painted wooden railing, a cross, 
and the tricolour. Often the poor fellow's kepi is 
there too, and sometimes his coat and boots. When 
the grave is near habitations — and that means near 
a village, for there are no isolated houses — it often 
has flowers placed on it. The graves occur in the 
oddest places: in the midst of fields, — more than 
once I saw the tricolour just visible among the 
ripening corn, — beside the road, in front gardens 
and back. At Pargny, for example, there are sev- 
eral graves in a garden close to the railway, and 
just behind a neighbouring chateau three Germans 
lie, two named and one unidentified, but all com- 
mended to God's mercy. The chateau was closed, 
and one wonders if on the owner's return these 
graves will be removed. 

For the present, I believe, no French graves 
are to be disturbed; but in course of time the 
question of permitting relatives to remove bodies 
(38) 



The Marne After the Battle 

to consecrated ground may be considered. A cer- 
tain amount of surreptitious removal was practised 
at first — very naturally, I think — but that was soon 
stopped. Of course private feelings have to be 
borne in mind, but where they are not strong I hope 
that the graves will remain scattered about as they 
now are. Probably a large number are certain to 
remain; and as it is, it is no rare experience to 
see a grave dating from the war of 1870 — always 
an impressive sight. 

One thing is sure, and that is that the great 
composite graves must remain. Some of these, 
in the parts where an engagement was fierce, con- 
tain large numbers of bodies, even upwards of a 
hundred. There are some near Maurupt. For the 
most part they are distinct — the French lying 
together and the Germans lying together, and 
they are marked accordingly; but at one village 
whose name I forget, not far from Blesmes, is a 
grave in which a Frenchman who accounted for 
more than thirty of the foe is buried with them. 
The German officer who destroyed Sermaize by 
shell and fire is buried just outside the town, in a 
great sloping meadow, and with him are certain 
others. He had been wounded, but was writing 
triumphantly to his wife when the French dashed 
in and captured him. His wound proved fatal. 

In a mass of outbuildings which I visit — stables 
and lofts, dairy, wash-house and coach-house, now 
empty, but occupied by the Germans during the 

(39) 



Cloud and Silver 

battle of the Marne for a night or so^ and by many 
French regiments on their way to the Front since 
then — are a series of five little rooms, probably 
originally meant for grooms. Here at one time, 
for a rather longer period than usual, a group of 
French officers lived. Their names are on the 
walls, together with some of their portraits in 
silhouette (made by throwing the shadow of the 
profile with a candle, pencilling round the edges, 
and then blacking it all in), verses, mottoes, senti- 
ments, such as "Vivent les femmes, le vin, et le 
tabac!" and a number of high-spirited drawings 
which, in the words of a cure who was with me, 
are distinctly "pas propres" and ought never to 
have met his virginal eyes. One of the poems 
enumerates the many gifts of a young officer of 
Zouaves, a very Admirable Crichton. His name is 
given. And when one reaches the end where the 
poet's signature is, behold the hero and his eulogist 
are one! Another is a savage attack by an assas- 
sin, in the manner of Aristide Bruant, on the 
judges of France. It would be interesting to know 
if the confessions in this strange doggerel were 
really autobiographical. There are enough to 
guillotine him. 

I was present in one village on the night that 
marching orders had come to the regiment which 
had been billeted there for some weeks. They 
were from the Midi, and spoke mostly the guttural 
French that one hears in Toulouse and Marseilles. 
The village street, the usual alternation of white 
(40) 



The Marne After the Battle 

cottages and farm-houses^ was pitch dark save for 
the glimmering of light from a window here and 
there; and as it was full of wagons all ready for 
departure at daybreak, walking there was danger- 
ous. Songs came from this room and that: ditties 
familiar to all, for all were sung in rich unison. 
Wlienever a lull came one heard the low whispered 
tones of farewells in the darker corners. How 
many broken hearts these careless, homeless fight- 
ing-men leave behind them, who shall say? For 
they carry their facile affections from village to 
village as they steadily draw nearer and nearer to 
the Real Thing. 

In the hotel at Vitry was a French officer's 
fiancee, blonde and triste. He joined her at the 
table d'hote, where they used to make plans, not 
with too much confidence: a little wistfully, and as 
though the gods might overhear. "Apres la 
guerre," she would say, time and again, and he 
echoed it: "Apres la guerre!" This phrase is the 
burden of conversation all over the country, from 
Calais to the Pyrenees, from Ushant to Marseilles 
— "Apres la guerre!" Then what things will be 
done! For those who do not look too deeply or 
take long views, all that is joyful and perfect is 
summed up in these words^ "Apres la guerre!" 



(41) 



AVAYSIDE NOTES 
I Gratitude 

I WAS sitting by my friend, the Captain, home 
on short leave, on the top of the motor-bus; 
where we were riding because of the fineness of 
the day and his desire to see more of that strange 
foreign city, London, rather than from necessity, 
for he is a landowner in the Shires and will have 
a good four-figure income to his name even after 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer has done his 
worst with it. 

Well, we had not much more than established 
ourselves at Piccadilly Circus, going west, when 
an old lady on the seat in front of ours leaned 
back and spoke to my friend. She was one of those 
old ladies whose curves are all very soft. She had 
pretty grey hair, and gold-rimmed glasses, and the 
voice which, from its kind intonation, is usually 
called motherly, and no eyes whatever for the nice 
distinctions of military rank. Turning half round, 
she asked my friend what regiment he was in. He 
told her. And had he been wounded? No. But 
he had been in the trenches.^ Oh yes. And he 
was going back? Directly almost. 

And here the conductor came up with "All 
fares, please.** We felt for our money, but the 
(42) 



Wayside Notes 

old lady interposed. "Young man/' she said to the 

Squire of , "I can't let you pay for yourself. 

I should like to pay for you. It's little enough 
one can do for our brave soldiers." 

The poor Captain was for a second so embar- 
rassed by her praise that he could say nothing; 
but there was a fine light in his face as he thanked 
her and watched her extract his penny as well as 
her own from the old-fashioned purse in her 
reticule. 

"There/' she said^ as she handed the two coins 
to the conductor — "it would be a shame to let you 
pay that yourself." 

These are the awkward moments. It was so 
comic and so beautiful; and I was glad when my 
friend^ although we were far from our destination, 
stood up to descend. 

On the pavement he spoke. "Another minute 
and I should have '* 

"Laughed/' I supplied. 

"No/* said the hero of a year's campaign, 
"cried/' 

II The Mistake 

There is no need to specify the restaurant. It 
is famous for its English fare, and visions of its 
joints, pushed thoughtfully from table to table on 
little carriages by elderly white-robed carvers, are 
said to do more to sustain hope in the trenches than 
even the consolations of religion. 

To one of the tables, provided with so many 

(43) 



Cloud and Silver 

chairs that secrets have ever been out of the ques- 
tion here^ came two lieutenants, very obviously off 
duty for a brief season and rejoicing in their lib- 
erty; and he who was acting as host, and had long 
since settled all doubts as to what their meal was 
to consist of, flung out the order for roast beef al- 
most before he was seated; flung it out too as 
though expecting as instant a response from the 
staff as he gets from his men, all unmindful that 
this restaurant has leisurely processes of its own, 
carefully acquired and perfected during many, 
many years. 

Meanwhile the saddle of mutton was wheeled to 
my side and some unusually attractive slices were 
separated from it and laid before me. 

I saw the lieutenants eyeing my plate with ill- 
concealed envy; but beef was in their minds. Beef 
had been in their minds for toilsome weeks, and 
they did not betray their friend. At least not 
wholly, but I fancy the host wavered. 

"I wonder " he began, and said no more, 

for the beef arrived on its little wagon, and their 
plates were soon covered with it. 

It was not one of the most successful of the 
house's joints, and again I caught their eyes di- 
rected towards my saddle. Was it too late? their 
expression silently asked. Yes, it was. Besides, 
they had come there to eat beef. Nothing like 
beef! 

The lieutenants attacked with vigour, but they 
still glanced muttonwards now and then, medita- 
tively, between bites. 
(44) 



Wayside Notes 

Then the host spoke. It was in an undertone, 
but I heard, because at this restaurant, as I have 
said, there are no secrets. *'I wonder if we 
oughtn't to have had saddle ?" he murmured. 

"It looks jolly good," said the other. 

They ate on. 

"Do you think the beef is absolutely top-hole 
to-day?" the host asked. 

"I've known it better," replied the other. 

They ate on. 

"I rather wish we'd had mutton," said the host. 
"After all — saddle, you know. It's not too com- 
mon. Beef we can always get in some form or 
other — not like this, of course, but beef — whereas 
saddle, saddle's rare. I wish you'd reminded me 
of the saddles here." 

"We'd settled on beef long ago," said the other, 
performing prodigies of valour with his knife and 
fork. 

"I know; but it was foolish not to look at the 
bill of fare. I should have thought of it then." 

They still ate heartily. 

"No chance of getting here again for goodness 
knows how long," said the host. 

The other dismally agreed. 

"Could you manage a slice of saddle after this ?" 
the host asked after a busy interval. 

"Sorry I couldn't," replied the other, through a 
mouthful which a lion would not disdain. 

"I don't believe I could either," said the host. 
"What a bore! I shall always regret not having 
had mutton." 

(45) 



Cloud and Silver 

"So shall I/' said the other. 

At this moment the empty seat next to me was 
filled^ and to the inquiry of the head waiter, whose 
duty it is to ask these questions and then dis- 
appear for ever, the customer replied, "Saddle, of 
course. That's all one comes here for." 

Both the lieutenants groaned audibly. Full 
though they were, their lunch, already ruined by 
me, was ruined again. 



Ill Repentance 

At the unusual sound of cheering in a London 
street — at so undemonstrative an hour as 9-15 
a.m. — I turned and stopped. Down Charing Cross 
Road came three taxis, each containing many bags 
and many young men — certainly seven young men 
in each, packed high and low — and each contain- 
ing two or more of that beautiful red, v/hite and 
green flag which flutters so gaily and bravely over 
public buildings in Rome and Florence and Turin, 
in Venice, Verona and Milan, and on festa days 
(which seem to come seven times a week) in all 
the villages of the loveliest land on earth. 

The young men waved and shouted, and shame- 
faced London, which has never yet cheered its own 
soldiers through the street, shouted back. For 
these were young Italians on their way to Italy, 
and there is something about a foreigner hasten- 
ing home to fight for his country that would seem 
to be vastly more splendid than the sight of our 
(46) 



Wayside Notes 

own compatriots leaving home for the same pur- 
pose. So oddly are we English made. 

Still, these young fellows were so jolly and 
eager, and, even in the moment of time permitted 
by their sudden apparition, it was so possible to 
envisage war's horrors in front of them, that no 
wonder there was this unwonted enthusiasm in 
the Charing Cross Road at 9.15 a.m. Besides, 
Italy had been a long time coming in . . . 

A block brought the taxis to a standstill just 
by me, and I was conscious of something familiar 
about the youth in grey on the very summit of 
the first. He had perched himself on the fixed 
fore-part of the cab, and knelt there waving a 
straw hat in one hand and his country's flag in 
the other. And suddenly, although his face was 
all aglow and his mouth twisted by his clamour, 
I recognised him as a waiter at the — well, at a 
well-knov/n restaurant, whose stupidity had given 
me from day to day much cause for irritation and 
to whom I had again and again been, I fear, ex- 
ceedingly unpleasant. Less than a week before I 
had been more than usually sharp. And nov/ I 
found myself trying to catch his eye and throw 
into my recognition of him not only admiration 
but even affection — a look that would convince 
him instantly that I wished every impatient word 
unsaid. But he was too excited to see anything 
in particular. His gaze was for the London that 
he had lived in and was now leaving, and for that 
London as a whole; and his thoughts were on his 
native land and the larger life before him. He had, 

(47) 



Cloud and Silver 

very rightly, at the moment no eyes for one of 
those impatient, unreasonable and bad-tempered 
Englishmen known as customers. 

In a few moments off they all went again, and 
with them went my thoughts — to their beautiful 
land of sunshine and lizards, of blue skies and 
lovely decay and absurd gesticulating men with 
hearts of gold. With them went my envy too, for 
it must be wonderful to be young and able to 
give up carrying plates and strike a blow for one's 
country. 

Since then I have found myself saying to my- 
self, I don't know how many times, "I wish he had 
seen me." 



(48) 



LAUGHTER IN THE TRENCHES 

THE careless facetiousness of the British sol- 
dier in the fighting line of the present war is 
the wonder of the world. Where does he get this 
spirit? we ask. How comes it that^ even there, 
jokes are so ready to his tongue.^ How can so 
much of his terrible business lend itself to jest? 
The complete answer would require a psycholog- 
ical memoir of great length, and no doubt we 
should in the course of it alight upon the fact 
that irony is allied to courage, or, at any rate, is 
one of the best protections against a too vivid 
perception of fact, and, collectively, an admirable 
means of concealing deej^er feelings. But it is not 
the British soldier's use of humour as a sustaining 
influence in which I am at the moment interested, 
but his general day and night delight in it. This 
not only is new, but very curious. 

For the best rapid idea of the persistent levity 
that I mean, one must go perhaps to the drawings 
of Captain Bruce Bairns father, collected in a book 
entitled Fragments from France. Here may be 
seen two score and more diverting pictures of Mr. 
Atkins at the Front informed by a sardonic laugh- 
ing philosophy. The horrors of war are by no 
means lacking. Indeed, but for those horrors we 
should not have these jokes: the relation is inti- 

(49) 



Cloud and Silver 

mate. No historian of the war who takes any 
account of the psychology of the New Army can 
afford to neglect Captain Bairnsfather's work. 
And it certainly reveals the value of irony as a 
prop in hard times. Without that buckler no 
trench fighter is fully armed. 

What is the cause of this levity in this most 
cruel and terrible of campaigns? To a large 
extent fashion. Human nature, it is true, does 
not change, but human veneers change very often; 
and no doubt there is a fashion for facetiousness 
to-day that did not exist a few years ago. They 
had their jesters then, of course, but the joke was 
not essential; it was not yet crowned. To-day 
every one is funny, or would like to be funny. It 
is a kind of national duty. To-day the German 
trenches are given comic names, and bayonet 
charges towards them, which are to end in the 
bloodiest and most dreaded kind of warfare, are 
dashed into to such battle-cries as "Early doors, 
sixpence !" — a significant enough form of words, 
for it is largely through the music-hall and theatre 
that this prevailing and far from undesirable 
tendency to jest has grown and spread. Were I 
lecturing upon the two Georges — Mr. George 
Graves, with his grotesque epithet or simile for 
every incident of life; and Mr. George Robey, 
with his discoveries of the humour that lurks in 
seaminess — I should say that they are prime mov- 
ers in this mode. Without them and what they 
stand for there would not exist half the raillery 
that now enlivens and heartens the army. 
(50) 



Laughter in the Trenches 

But there is still another reason for the levity 
of our men in this war; and that is the foe him- 
self. Implacable and unscrupulous as the enemy 
has been, the German qua German yet remains a 
comic figure to the mind of the English rank and 
file soldier, who is, one has to remember, very 
largely either the man in the street or the man in 
the village. To him the broad idea of the Ger- 
man, familiar, though not much considered, for 
years, is a quaint foreigner, often in too sharp 
competition with Englishmen, who shaves his head, 
usually wears spectacles, has an outlandish speech, 
is often too fat and always too alien; while it is 
notorious that he lives on sausages and that they 
are made of dachshunds. Probably the insepara- 
ble association of the sausage with Germany would 
alone have served to render the German a figure 
pour rire in the eyes of the un examining, for, as 
has been often enough pointed out, it is suffi- 
cient to mention this article of diet to any English 
music-hall audience to have them in fits of laughter. 
Why, no one has ever wholly understood. For the 
comedian to say "kipper" is to partake of much 
of the same triumph, but not all. The sausage 
comes first, and the German, no matter what the 
rest of his activities may be, or how dreadful, is a 
sausage-eater or even sausage-worshipper. 

Such, then, is the preconception, however 
erroneous, and it is so firmly fixed that not even 
the horrors of war can wholly exclude a certain 
amusement at the notion of this figure, indefi- 

(51) 



Cloud and Silver 

nitely multiplied and clad in uniform^ constituting 
the other side. 

So much for those of our soldiers who had 
never met a German. There remain those that 
had^ and here again was notliing to provoke antici- 
patory gloom, for the Germans visible and tangible 
to the man in the street and the man in the village 
are Germans who have shaved them_, or fed them, 
or done them out of jobs; and none of them, 
despite their efficiency, were ridicule proof. There 
was something comic in the idea of an enemy con- 
sisting of this expatriated parasitical type of war- 
rior. It made the campaign wear a farcical look. 
I do not suggest that there have not been very 
serious awakenings and realisations to the contrary, 
but the preconception gave the note and it has 
persisted. Moreover, when it is remembered that 
the British soldier is more ready to be amused than 
to be frightened, it will be seen that even the 
Germans themselves have contributed not a little 
to this risibility since the war began. That they 
devastated Belgium is true, but the deed carried 
its penalty with it in the name Hun, and to Mr. 
Atkins' whimsical mind such a word as that, and 
especially without the aspirate, is meat and drink. 
An enemy who, whatever his deadly purposeful- 
ness, can be characterised as 'uns is bound to 
attract banter. Then, again, there was the French 
soldier's word for him, also very sympathetic to 
the British sense of fun — Boche. The finer types 
of foe could never be called either 'un or Bosh; 
and when an 'ymn of 'ate is added there is no more 
(52) 



Laughter in the Trenches 

to be said. In short, whatever the Germans have 
done, they have left a loophole, a joint in the 
armour, for the satirist to penetrate, and satire was 
never more general in England than now. 

If one doubts that the alleged character and 
physical conformation of the enemy is in any way 
responsible for so much jestingness in our men, 
one has but to conjecture what would be the case 
were we fighting some one else. Did our men, for 
example, exhibit during the Crimean War anything 
approaching the sardonic mirthfulness of their 
present attitude? I can find no evidence that 
they did. And is it likely, were the Russians of 
to-day our foes instead of our friends, that our 
men would fight them laughing as they are so ready 
to laugh now? I think not, for the Russian is 
certainly not a figure of fun to the English mind. 
The mass of us know almost nothing about him, 
but what we do know, or think we know, is very 
serious. 

Or against the French, should we be so light- 
hearted, so ready with hilarity ? I think not. The 
Frenchman, once a target for English ridicule, 
has long ceased to be so. To this generation 
the term "Froggy" is hardly known. Moreover, 
the French, when it comes to warfare, have a 
tradition that carries a very impressive weight. 
They may have been beaten by the Germans in 
1870, but Napoleon is still a gigantic idea, and 
atavistically we may yet be conscious of the Boney 
scares. Anyway, I hold that whatever precon- 
ception the man in the street and the man in the 

(53) 



Cloud and Silver 

village may have fostered with regard to the 
French, there was no element of contempt in it. 
One reason for this I have given, and the other is 
that Frenchmen are rare in England, and when 
they are met they are not antipathetic enough for 
any very distinct preconception to have been 
formed, and certainly not one of disdain. It is 
the admirable nature of the French to wish to 
leave France as little as they can, and, once away, 
to wish quickly to be back again; and with such a 
nostalgia always present, they are concerned to 
take away no Englishman's livelihood. To a 
Frenchman there is no home but the country which 
it is foolishly customary to accuse of lacking a 
word for that sacred haven; whereas many Ger- 
mans who bleat tearfully of their Fatherland are 
never happy until they substitute foreign soil for it. 



(Si) 



THE SINKINO OF THE U 29 
By K 9 

I AM one of the unhappiest of creatures, be- 
cause I have been misunderstood. Nothing 
is worse than to mean well and do all you can, and 
still be misunderstood beyond any possibility of 
explanation. That is my tragedy just now, and it 
all comes of having four legs and no articulation, 
when the people who control things have only two 
and can express themselves. 

"Sirius, how I ache ! But let me tell you. 

"I am a performing dog — nothing more and 
nothing less. I am associated with a man named — 
but perhaps I had better not give his name, as he 
might be still more cross with me, especially as 
he does not come too well out of this story. I am 
one — in fact, the principal one — of his troupe; 
and I have a number of quite remarkable tricks 
and the capacity to perform as many again if only 
my master would think it worth while to add to 
his list. But so long as there are so many music- 
halls where his present performance is always a 
novelty — and there are so many that he could be 
in a different one every week for the next ten 
years if he liked — why should he worry himself to 
do anything fresh .^ That is the argument he uses, 

(55) 



Cloud and Silver 

not being a real artist and enthusiast, as I am, 
and as is one of my friends in the troupe too. 
She, however, does not come into this story. 

"I don't know whether you know anything 
about music-halls, but it is my privilege to be in 
one and perhaps two every day, entertaining tired 
people, and the custom now is, if any striking 
news of the war arrives during the evening, for 
one of the performers to announce it. Naturally, 
since human beings like being prominent and 
popular as much as dogs do, a performer is very 
glad when it falls to him to make the announce- 
ment. Applause is very sweet to the ear, even 
if it is provoked merely by narrating the heroism 
of others, and it is not difficult for any one accus- 
tomed to hear it to associate himself with the 
action that has called it forth. I feel that I am 
very rambling in my remarks, but my point is that 
the privilege of telling the audience about a great 
deed just now is highly prized, and a performer 
who is foolish enough to miss the chance is stupid 
indeed. 

"I must now tell you that my master is not the 
most sensible of men. It was clever of him to get 
into touch with so able an animal as myself and 
to treat me so sensibly as to induce me to stay 
with him and work for him; but his cleverness 
stops there. In private life he is really very silly, 
spending all his time in talking and drinking with 
other professionals, and boasting of the successes 
he has had, instead of learning new jokes and 
allowing me to do new tricks, as I should love to. 
(56) 



The Sinking of the U 29 

"Well, the other night, just as we were going 
on, some one brought the news of the sinking of 
the U 29. I heard it distinctly, but my master 
was so muzzy and preoccupied that, though he 
pulled himself together sufficiently to say 'Good 
business !' in reply, he did nothing else. He failed 
to realise what a chance it was for him to make a 
hit for himself. 

"Look at the situation. On the one hand was 
the audience, longing to be cheered up by such a 
piece of news, and on the other a stupid performer 
too fresh from a neighbouring bar to appreciate 
his luck in having the opportunity of imparting 
it and bringing down the house. And not only 
that. For there was also myself — a keen patri- 
otic British dog longing to tell the news, but unable 
to make all these blockheads understand, because 
with all their boasted human knowledge and brains 
they haven't yet learned to know what dogs are 
talking about. The result was — would you be- 
lieve it? — my master began his ancient patter just 
as if nothing had happened. I tweaked his leg, but 
in vain. I snapped at him, I snarled at him, to 
bring him to his senses ; but all in vain. 

"Then I took the thing into my own paws. 
I ceased to pay him any attention. All I did was 
to stand at the footlights facing the house and 
shout out to the audience again and again, 'The 
U 29 has been sunk with all hands !' 

" 'Come here, you devil,' said my master under 
his breath, 'and behave, or I'll give you the biggest 
thrashing you ever had.' 

(57) 



Cloud and Silver 

"But I didn't care. I remained by the foot- 
lights, screaming out, 'The U 29 has been sunk 
with all hands !' 

" 'Mercy, how the dog barks !' a lady in a box 
exclaimed. Bark! I wasn't barking. I was dis- 
seminating the glad tidings. 

" 'Silence, you brute !' my master cried, and 
brought down his little whip on my back. 

"But I still kept on. 'They must know it, they 
must be told!' I said to myself, and I persisted 
with the news until at last the stage-manager 
rang down the curtain and our turn was called off. 
And a second later he was on the stage himself, 
apologising for my conduct and telling the audi- 
ence about the U 29; and in their excitement they 
forgot all about their disappointment at not seeing 
me perform. Their applause was terrific. 

" 'See what you missed by your folly,' I said to 
my master. But he paid no attention, he merely 
set about giving me the thrashing of my life. 

"Sirius, how I ache !'* 



(58) 



THE EEAL HERO OF THE WAR 

THERE is an impression about that among 
the candidates for the position of real hero 
of the war King Albert might have a chance; or 
even Lord Kitchener or General JofFre, But I 
have my doubts^ after all that I have heard — and 
I love to hear it and to watch the different ways 
in which the tellers narrate it: some so frankly 
proud; some just as proud, but trying to conceal 
their pride. After all that I have heard I am 
bound to believe that for the real hero of the war 
we must look elsewhere. 

Not much is printed of this young fellow's 
deeds; one gets them chiefly by word of mouth 
and very largely in club smoking-rooms. In rail- 
way carriages too, and at dinner-parties. These 
are the places where the champions most do con- 
gregate and hold forth. And from what they say 
he is a most gallant and worthy warrior. Versa- 
tile as well, for not only does he fight and bag 
his Boche, but he is wounded and imprisoned. 
Sometimes he rides a motor-cycle, sometimes he 
flies, sometimes he has charge of a gun, some- 
times he is doing Red Cross work, and again he 
helps to bring up the supplies with the A.S.C. 
He has been everywhere. He was at Mons and 
he was at Cambrai. He marched into Ypres, and 

(59) 



Cloud and Silver 

is rather angry when the Germans are blamed for 
shelling the Cloth Hall, because he tells you that 
there was a big French gun firmly established be- 
hind it, and only by shelling the building could 
the enemy hope to destroy that dangerous piece 
of ordnance. He was at Loos and Hooge. He saw 
something of the bombardment of Rheims, and he 
watched the monitors at work on the Belgian coast. 
His story of the landing at Suvla Bay is a marvel ; 
and even more graphic is his description of the 
great evacuation. 

And not only does he perform some of the 
best deeds and often get rewarded for them, but 
he is a good medium for news too. He hears 

things. He's somewhere about when General 

says something of the deepest significance to 

General . He knows men high up in the 

War Office. He refers lightly to K., and staff 
officers apparently tell him many of their secrets. 
He often has the latest Admiralty news too, and 
it was he who had the luck to be in the passage 
when Lord Fisher and another Sea Lord executed 
their historic waltz on the receipt of the news of 
Sturdee's coup. No one can give you so high a 
figure of the number of submarines we have 
bagged. Sometimes, I admit, his information must 
be taken with salt; but denials do not much abash 
him. He was prepared for them and can explain 
them. 

His letters are interesting and cover a vast 
amount of ground. They are sometimes very 
well written, and in differing moods he abuses 
(60) 



The Real Hero of the War 

the enemy and pities them. He never grumbles 
but is sometimes preplexed by overwork in the 
trenches. He hates having to stand long in water, 
and has lost more comrades than he likes to 
think about. One day he was quite close to Gen- 
eral JofFre, whom he regards as a sagacious leader, 
cautious and far-sighted; another day he was 
close to Sir Douglas Haig, and nothing could 
exceed the confidence which his appearance kin- 
dled in him. He is a little inconsistent now and 
then, and one day says he has more cigarettes than 
he can smoke, and the next bewails the steady 
shortage of tobacco. As to his heroic actions he is 
reticent; but we know that many of the finest 
deeds have been performed by him. He has saved 
lives and guns and has won the D.S.O. and even 
the V.C. 

And what is his name? Well, I can't say what 
his name is, because it is not always the same; 
but I can tell you how he is always described by 
those who relate his adventures, his prowess, his 
news, his suspicions, and his fears. He is always 
referred to as "My son." 

"My son," when all is said, is the real hero of 
the war. 



(61) 



VARIOUS ESSAYS 
OF BAREHEADEDNESS 

THE motto on the play-bill of a recent comedy 
stated that kings and queens have five fingers 
on each hand^ take their meals regularly, and are, 
in short, the same as other people. But it is not 
true. No amount of such assurance will make 
kings the same as other people, because they are 
not. And the reason they are not the same is 
that they are different. I have just seen some of 
the difference. 

I was leaving a London terminus, and, being 
with an invalid, I was travelling in a reserved 
compartment. Under the influence of well-directed 
silver bullets, porters had been skipping about in 
ecstasies of servility, and I was beginning to think 
myself almost one of the governing classes, when 
I observed two stationmaster persons in frock- 
coats and tall hats take their stand expectantly 
just by our carriage window; and one of our serfs 
came back importantly to inform us that a certain 
member of the royal house of England was trav- 
elling by the same train, and, in fact, would gra- 
ciously occupy the very next compartment. 
Unhappily, however, this compartment was not 
on the engine side of ours, but on the other, so 
(62) 



Of Bareheadedness 

that although the presence of a traveller so august 
guaranteed a certain measure of safety, it could 
not absolutely eliminate risk for ourselves in the 
event of a collision, as it would, of course, have 
done had the salt of the earth been nearer the 
engine than we. Our assurance was limited to the 
knowledge that if a collision should occur its 
force would expend itself by the time our com- 
partment was reached. We should be the ulti- 
mate victims. None the less it was comforting to 
be so near the Rose. Not the Rose itself, I must 
admit; nor even the Rose's consort. That much 
I may say, but beyond that I do not intend to 
divulge anything, merely remarking that though 
not a sovereign herself, there would be a different 
Kaiser in one country and a different queen in 
another had the lady v/ho was about to take her 
seat in the next compartment possessed neither 
nephew nor daughter. 

Well, suddenly a magnificent motor-car — so 
long and silent and luxurious that I marvelled at 
its occupants ever exchanging its warmth and 
security for a draughty terminus and a noisy rail- 
way train — drew up opposite our windows, and in 
a flash all head-gear was off — the two station- 
master persons* tall hats, the chauffeur's and the 
footman's caps, and the bowler of the tall defer- 
ential aristocratic gentleman who emerged from the 
car and helped the royal lady and her companion 
to alight. With the exception of the chauffeur 
and the footman, all, I may note, were partly bald. 
Then came a blossoming of courtesies on the part 

(63) 



Cloud and Silver 

of the officials and acknowledgment of them by 
the visitors; nods and becks and wreathed smiles 
were exchanged; hands were even shaken; the 
royalty and her friend were ushered to their seats ; 
the tall gentleman-in-waiting, who combined with 
the tactful aloofness of an undertaker the fluent 
ease of a diplomat and the authority of a com- 
mander, said a word or two to the railway repre- 
sentatives with a gay laugh, and disappeared into 
his own compartment, where doubtless he would 
kindle an expensive cigar; final salutations; and 
the train started, and heads once more were cov- 
ered. Never had I occupied a private box so near 
the stage before. 

And at our destination, which, as it chanced, was 
theirs too, we had all the comedy again, only here, 
in the provinces, there was a touch of gaucherie to 
help it. The Mayor was on the platform, hat in 
hand; near him were the chief constable and the 
stationmaster; and all were already bareheaded 
when the train drew up, and had j^erhaps been 
so for hours — the engine-driver being carefully 
instructed to operate his brakes to bring the royal 
compartment (and incidentally ours) abreast the 
welcome. All the members of the reception com- 
mittee were again either bald or partly bald, so 
that I began to wonder if royalty's eyes ever 
alight upon a well-afForested head at all; and all 
received a gracious hand-shake. And again, hav- 
ing swiftly alighted from the train, here was the 
tall gentleman-in-waiting, hat in hand, a little 
rebuking to the Mayor by reason of his bowler, 
(64) 



Of Bareheadedness 

while his worship still clung to the steadily obso- 
lescing topper. And so, in another storm of 
courtesies and acknowledgments, the royal lady 
drove off in the Mayor's carriage, and, a normal 
atmosphere having asserted itself, we plebeians 
were at liberty to descend. 

But how can any dramatist pretend that kings 
and queens are the same as other people.^ And 
how, indeed, could they be the same, even if they 
wished, with all this ceremony of bare heads to 
set them back again in their place .^ For no one 
could stand it. In a very few days* time any 
man's character would, if all heads were bared 
directly he appeared, show signs of change. If 
one would remain ordinary and like unto the 
majority of one's kind, one must now and then be 
in the presence of a hat. To see nothing but 
scalps, whether or not covered with hair, indoors 
and out, cannot but make life artificial and rarefied. 
People in this position, with such an unvaried 
prospect, can never be like anybody else, no mat- 
ter how regularly they take their meals or how 
normal thdr hands may be. 



(65) 



OF SILVER PAPER 

OPENING a new box of cigarettes this morn- 
ing, I came upon the usual piece of silver 
paper. But I did not as usual disregard it, but 
held it in my hand, examining it in a kind of won- 
der for some minutes, and asking myself why such 
beautiful stuff should be at the disposal of tobac- 
conists in such profusion, how it; was made, how 
it could be so cheap, and so forth. And I then 
shed some dozens of years from my shoulders by 
wrapping a penny in it and, by infinite smooth- 
ings with the back of a finger-nail, transmuting 
that coin into a lustrous half-crown — as I used 
to do when the world was young and silver paper 
a treasured rarity. And, having finished playing 
with it, I came back to the question, How is silver 
paper made? and from that to the question. How 
are most things made? and so to a state of stupor 
occasioned by the realisation of my abysmal igno- 
rance. For I have no notion how silver paper is 
made, and I am sufficiently bold and sceptical 
to doubt too if the Swiss Family Robinson could 
have made it, to save their lives. 

What would one first look for if one were told, 

out of a clear sky, to make some silver paper? 

Obviously not paper, for there is no paper about 

it; and obviously not silver, for if silver came 

(66) 



Of Silver Paper 

into its preparation tobacconists and chocolate 
manufacturers could not throw it about as they 
do. Thus it is borne in upon me^ and I recognise 
the verity with profound sadness, that, heir of 
the ages as I am, I am as ignorant of the making 
of silver paper as though I were a South Sea 
savage. Not only am I at a loss as to its prepa- 
ration, but also as to what kind of people make 
it; where their factories are; what they call them- 
selves. It may be a by-product of something else; 
it may be a business alone. Boys at Eton may be 
the sons of silver-paper makers or they may not. 
I don't know, nor do I know whether they would 
mention the source of their fathers* wealth or 
conceal it. 

And I am equally ignorant as to the origin of 
thousands of other things which I fancy one ought 
to know. Looking round the room, my eyes alight 
on one thing after another. Colour printing, for 
example — ^how would one ab initio, set about that.^ 
An ordinary printing press I could see myself 
laboriously building up, with some rude success; 
but how do they take a Royal Academy picture, 
such as that on the wall above me, and trans- 
late it into mechanical reproduction? I have no 
notion beyond the vaguest. I know that photog- 
raphy comes in, and that three colours provide all 
the necessary tints and gradations; but how, I 
know not. And glass? What is the first step in 
the making of glass — that most mysterious of all 
substances: a great sheet of hard nothingness 
through which at this moment I watch a regi- 

(67) 



Cloud and Silver 

ment of soldiers marching by? Could Robinson 
Crusoe have had glass? I feel convinced that he 
could not. Pens and ink, yes ; and some substitute 
for paper (so long as it was not silver paper), yes; 
but never glass. Even such an ordinary matter as 
soap baffles me. I know that fat goes to its making, 
but I know also that, normally, fat rubbed on the 
hands makes them not clean but peculiarly beastly. 
How, then, does soap get its cleansing properties? 
I have no notion. And I am considered by those 
who meet me as not wholly an uninstructed man. 

I look through my pockets. Money — yes, one 
could make some kind of an attempt at money, 
if one could get metal. A pencil? — yes, that is 
just black lead cut into a strip and enclosed in 
wood: easy. A knife? — not so simple, but obvi- 
ously possible, because all castaways make things 
to cut with. Even, however, if I could not make 
these things, I know where they are made, and 
more or less how they are made. There are books 
to tell me this. What no book knows anything 
about is silver paper. Not even those friends of 
the ignorant, the Encyclopaedists, help me. Their 
books lie before me, but all their million pages 
are silent as to silver paper; or if they do men- 
tion it, they carefully abstain from associating the 
information either with "paper" or "silver." 

Did I, I ask myself, merely go to the wrong 
school, or are all schools equally taciturn about 
this kind of thing? There should be special classes 
for potential castaways. In fact, all education 
that does not fit scholars to be, one day, marooned, 
(68) 



Of Silver Paper 

is defective: I would go as far as to say that. 
The height of mountains, the intricacies of algebra, 
the length of rivers, the dates of kings, matter 
nothing. But it does matter that one should know 
something about the ordinary daily things of life, 
their constituents and manufacture. Suppose the 
Government appointed me — as — after all the 
books I have written, with their show of informa- 
tion, it might easily do, at, of course, an insuffi- 
cient wage — to be the companion of some gentle 
inquisitive barbarian visiting these shores — some 
new Prince Lee Boo — a nice kind of idiot I should 
look when he began to fire his questions at me! 
And silver paper is precisely the kind of glitter- 
ing attractive stuff with which he would begin. 



(69) 



OF BEING SOMEBODY ELSE 

WALKING along Oxford Street the other 
day, I was aware of a new kind of cheap 
photographer's into which people were pouring as 
though it were a cinema and Mr. Chaplin were 
on view. And, after examining the specimen 
photographs in the frame by the door, I joined 
them, not for the purpose of facing the camera, 
but to observe young men and women in the enter- 
taining pastime of escaping from the fact, or, in 
other words, of assuming more agreeable identities 
than their own. 

For the novel characteristic of this studio is 
that for the trifling sum of one shilling it provides 
its patrons with six post-card photographs of them- 
selves in fancy dress; or, as a leaflet before me 
states, a shade too losely perhaps for Lindley 
Murray, but with perfect clarity, beneath a list 
of scores of costumes, "Every customer ordering 
six post cards for Is. are entitled to use which 
one of these garments they think best, free of 
charge.'* What a privilege! The list is exhaus- 
tive. It begins with Cowboys, goes on to Cow- 
girls, Indian Chiefs, Indian Man, Policeman, 
Pierrots, Mexicans, Nuns, Whittington's Cat, 
Quaker Girls, Jockeys, Gent's Evening Suit, Gip- 
sies, Highwaymen, Priests, John Bull, Cricketer, 
(70) 



Of Being Somebody Else 

Old Maid, Harem Skirt, Father Christmas, French 
Soldier, Aviator, Costers, Beefeaters, Buckingham 
suit, Nell Gwynne, Ladies' Evening Dress, Ladies' 
Tights, Boxer, King, Clown. The organisation is 
perfect. First the queue, then the ticket, then the 
choice of costume from the wardrobe upstairs, then 
the donning of it behind a screen, performed with 
infinite giggling when it is masculine and the wearer 
a girl, and then the taking of the photograph, 
which I can assure you is not allowed to occupy 
more than a few seconds. The only weak spot 
in the concern is the delay in developing and 
printing, for the client has to wait a day or so 
for the glorious results. Still, as a variation upon 
the drab routine of twentieth-century city life, not 
bad, is it? 

Judging by specimen photographs of the happy 
masqueraders, the cowboy costume stands very high 
in favour and is the most popular male dress for 
young women. These are to be seen also in many 
varieties of man's attire, even to that of the police, 
looking for the most part smirkingly self-con- 
scious but wholly satisfied. That no one would 
ever be taken in as to their sex matters nothing. 
A wooden horse of high mettle, obviously by a 
sire and dam with classic sawdust in their veins, 
lends verisimilitude to the cowboy illusion, and it is 
amusing to see this very recognisable noble animal 
turning up again and again in the pictures, always 
under perfect control. Some of the new Army 
doctors, who by the regulations are forced to wear 
spurs but have never spurred anything in their 

(71) 



Cloud and Silver 

lives, might, by the way, like to know of this 
placid charger. They are certain to wish to dis- 
tribute a few photographs of themselves. 

I have made only a selection from the costumes 
supplied. I might have added many more, such 
as naval officers and Red Cross nurses, both of 
which, I am told, are in great demand. I might, 
too, have mentioned the one that, after the 
"Buckingham suit" (which is perhaps merely a 
euphemism for Court dress), is most perplexing 
to me. This is described curtly as "draper." 
Who on earth wants to spend a shilling to be 
photographed as a draper ? And what is a draper's 
costume? I have seen thousands of drapers, but 
they did not differ from haberdashers, tailors, 
chemists, or hotel clerks. Dan Leno's shopwalker 
is probably the type selected — poor Dan having 
also confused the two functions; for a shopwalker 
only walks the shop, whereas the deathless figure 
invented by that ever-to-be-mourned comedian 
acted as a salesman too. 

That the studio is a success was inevitable, and 
I expect a great crop of imitations. For it is 
based on a sound knowledge of human nature. 
Its originators know life. Every one who has 
ever been a child remembers the excitement of 
dressing up. No game without dressing up in it 
could compare with one in which a father's tall 
hat, a mother's best dress, and a hairy hearth-rug 
were introduced; and very few of us ever cease 
wholly to be children. As the poet says, "we 
are but children of a larger growth." Through- 
(72) 



Of Being Somebody Else 

out life^ for most of us, to be somebody else is 
the thing. Well, at this studio young people 
who are no longer children play at being children 
once more. After working all day as clerks, or 
shopmen, or typists, or domestic servants, how 
delightful to come here and evade destiny by 
masquerading as highwaymen, bush-rangers. 
Queens of the Carnival, Dreadnought command- 
ers, and George the Fifth courtiers ! Better still, 
how tonic to the self-esteem to be taken in the act 
of complete mastery of a spirited horse! And 
what pictures to send away! What gallant por- 
traiture for the provinces! 

And — if we only knew — what an invigoration of 
ordinary life for a while ! I like to think that 
the effect upon a little lodging-house drudge of 
having been a Queen of the Carnival long enough 
for the evidence of the camera (which cannot 
lie) to be secured, cannot wear off at once. Surely 
she carries her head a shade higher in conse- 
quence, and bears the censure of her mistress with 
increased fortitude? I hope so: I believe so. 
And I can imagine a general toning-up of self- 
esteem in many a shop-bound youth in the knowl- 
edge, abundantly furnished by these postcards, 
that were he really the rightful possessor of a 
naval uniform he would not disgrace it, but pursue 
the Schmutzigehund, or whatever German cruiser 
came his way, as resolutely and effectively as Sir 
David Beatty himself; and this being so, in spite 
of fate's embargo, he does not do his less illustrious 
work any the worse. And many a seamstress 

(73) 



Cloud and Silver 

might with more composure view her inability to 
be smoothing the pillow and winning the heart and 
hand of a wounded officer if her eyes could now 
and then be refreshed by furtive peeps at herself 
in a Red Cross costume, and see how well she 
would look as a nurse (her true vocation) if only 
the gods were kinder. 

The strength of this studio is that in it the 
gods can be made kinder — momentarily. ' 



(74) 



OF PERSONS THAT WE ENVY 

THE last of the Commandments (which a little 
American boy broke so easily and so often 
that he thought he might as well make a clean job 
of it and go on to break the Eighth also), the 
Tenth Commandment, mercifully omits the only 
thing about any of my neighbours that I have ever 
coveted — their characteristics — and therefore I 
assume that such covetousness is innocent. Cer- 
tainly I can hear it declaimed by even the most 
minatory of clerics and turn no hair. To begin 
with, one's neighbours are usually so eminently 
persons to be avoided that the very idea of covet- 
ousness in connexion with them is grotesque. But 
reading a wider meaning into the word "neigh- 
bour" than it now has, there are certain people 
that one knows who possess some little personal 
gift or charm which one would not be unwilling 
to add to one's own repertory. If this is coveting, 
then most of us are guilty; but I have the con- 
viction that coveting must have meant more than 
merely desiring, must in Sinaitic times have over- 
run into theft, to figure in the Decalogue at all. 
For coveting in the abstract is almost as natural 
as breathing, and indeed it forms a basic part of 
at any rate one of the qualities which we unite 
in praising — ambition. 

(75) 



Cloud and Silver 

These thoughts were suggested to me last eve- 
ning by overhearing the sudden heartfelt exclama- 
tion of a young woman^ a total stranger^ in an hotel 
chair near me, in one of those uncomfortable 
focuses of self-consciousness called a lounge. "My 
word, how I envy her !" she said, as another young 
woman went by, on her way from the table d'hote; 
and straightway I fell to wondering if there was 
any one I too envied and what envy really meant. 

An essayist recording the heroic renunciation 
of a sailor on the Formidable, who, himself an 
orphan, relinquished cheerfully his right to a seat 
in one of the boats to a man who had parents, 
and releasing his hold of the gunwale was lost 
in the angry winter sea, expressed a wish that he 
might in similar circumstances behave as well: 
a feeling which, with whatever misgivings, we 
must all share. But that is admiration, not envy. 
No one wants to be a drowned sailor, however 
glorious his end. No one envies him. We envy 
the living, and, I suspect, the older we grow, the 
fewer of the living do we subject to that opera- 
tion. "How I wish I was So-and-so !" is the plaint 
of the young. The middle-aged know that the 
only thing in the world worth being is oneself, 
even with all oneself's limitations. But even the 
middle-aged can now and then wish for a modified 
transference of personality — for the grafting, upon 
their own otherwise unaltered stock, of a merit 
borrowed from this idol and that. "I wish I had 
So-and-so's easy manners !" we say. "I wish I 
could tell a story like Blank!" "I wish I could 
(76) 



Of Persons That We Envy 

sing as Dash does !'* "I wish I had Asterisk's 
memory for faces !" As a matter of fact we should 
not value any of these illicit acquisitions if we 
had them, since the whole structure of our per- 
sonality would be disarranged and trouble would 
ensue; but light-heartedly we may express the 
■sWsh. Well for us that no fairy is listening! 
Well for us that our heads, when we speak in this 
idle way, bear no magic caps ! 

Whom do you most envy? would be a good 
question to put to our friends. Putting the ques- 
tion to myself, I find that the one creature in the 
world whom at this moment I most envy — that is 
to say, who has eminently and glitteringly the 
characteristic which I most covet — is the lady of 
whom I was hearing recently, who on the evening 
of a dinner-party sought her room to dress, and 
did not re-emerge. Time passed, the guests ar- 
rived, every one was present but the hostess. Peo- 
ple began to grow nervous; the mauvais quart 
d'heure took on qualities of turpitude beyond bear- 
ing. At last the missing hostess was sought for 
by her daughter, and found comfortably asleep be- 
tween the sheets. Her forgetful mind, oblivious 
of the social engagement, but conscious of all the 
suggestion and routine of retirement, had sent her 
peacefully to bed. Now, there is a person whom 
I envy with all my heart, for I have never been 
able to do an absent-minded thing in my life, and 
I long for the experience. Existence would be- 
come simple if only I had a reputation for such 
vagaries. As it is, I am the one mechanical, 

(77) 



Cloud and Silver 

punctilious person in my circle. I am the one who 
is never permitted not to answer a letter, forget 
an appointment, or let even the most casual under- 
taking be neglected. But with that lady's sublime 
gift of domestic aphasia I could really have a 
holiday now and then. 



(78) 



OF GOOD ALE 

TWO things there are which^ however rosily 
one may view the present^ are never as good 
as they used to be. One is acting, and the other is 
ale. There are no actors, and (more particularly) 
no actresses, to compare with those of our youth; 
there is no ale such as we used to drink before 
we knew that we had to die. And we cling to 
both convictions the more tenaciously, possibly, 
because the excellence of both is now only hear- 
say. Our darling actresses (God bless them!) 
have retired, or are no more; the ale has long been 
drunken. 

In particular is it true of ale that it is not so 
good as it used to be. That ale to-day is not 
what it was is notorious, for too many Chancellors 
of the Exchequer have been at it; and specific 
gravity is the modern brewer's fetish; and a thou- 
sand devices for superseding his intimate personal 
attention and even solicitude have come into action. 
But the evidence of a pleasant book which lies 
open beside me proves that as far back as the 
year 1750 ale had fallen far below its true level, 
the sole cause of this treatise being the decadence 
that had come upon John Barleycorn. 

The book, the title of which is The London and 
County Brewer, 7th edition, 1758, is very English, 
very simple and enthusiastic, and wholly intent 

(79) 



Cloud and Silver 

upon reformation. The author's name is withheld, 
but he is described as "a Person formerly con- 
cerned in a Publick Brewhouse in London, but for 
Twenty Years past has resided in the Country/' 
and, to quote his own words from the preface: 
"By the Time the following Treatise is read over, 
and thoroughly considered, I doubt not, but an 
ordinary Capacity will be in some degree a better 
Judge of good and bad Malt-Liquors as a 
Drinker." This antithesis of an ordinary capacity 
and a drinker is pretty. He continues: "And 
therefore I am in great Hopes, these my Efforts 
will be one principal Cause of the reforming our 
Malt-Liquors in most Places; and that more pri- 
vate Families, than ever, will come into the de- 
lightful and profitable Practice of Brewing their 
own Drinks." Alas for that ideal ! There can be 
but few private brewhouses left. Beer is under a 
cloud; our very monarchs drink barley-water. 

Of all the many varieties of ale commended in 
this genial work, the author's favourite seems to 
be Devonshire White Ale. It was invented at the 
end of the seventeenth century at or near Plym- 
outh, and the author's "eager Pen" (as he describes 
it) gives it such a character as we now associate 
not with alcohol but with patent medicines. 
"Those who are not too far gone in consumption" 
find it beneficial; it cures colic and gravel; and 
it is "the best Liquor in the World for a Wet 
Nurse to drink." 

The modern brewer has given up the recom- 
mendation of his wares as the handmaids of 
(80) 



Of Good Ale 

^sculapius. But of old beer was much extolled 
in this way. In The Unlettered Muse, a rare 
volume of homely verse by John Hollamby, miller, 
of Hailsham, in Sussex, published in 1827, I find 
the following admirable Bacchanalian song in 
praise of the beer brewed by Thomas Gooche of 
Norfolk, who was brewing at Hailsham at that 
time. Here is the song: 

GOOCHE'S STRONG BEER 

"Fancy it Burg:undy, only fancy it, and 'tis worth ten 
shillings a quart." 

O, Gooche's beer your heart will cheer, 

And put you in condition; 
The man that will but drink his fill 

Has need of no physician. 

'Twill fill your veins, and warm your brains, 

And drive out melancholy; 
Your nerves 'twill brace, and paint your face, 

And make you fat and jolly. 

The foreigners they praise their wines 

('Tis only to deceive us) : 
Would they come here and taste this beer, 

I'm sure they'd never leave us. 

The meagre French their thirst would quench. 
And find much good 'twould do them; 

Keep them a year on Gooche's beer, 
Their country would not know them. 

All you that have not tasted it 

I'd have you set about it; 
No man with pence and common-sense 

Would ever be without it. 

(81) 



Cloud and Silver 

"The meagre French" is good. It takes a Hail- 
sham miller with a turn for verse to apply such 
an adjective to that nation. Had he travelled^ or 
even read, he would have known better — and 
worse. For truth nearly always cuts into the pic- 
turesque, and injustice, which is the salt of inter- 
national lampoons, dies in its presence. But what 
is there in the air of Sussex that so inspires that 
county's poets to the praises of ale? Mr. Belloc 
must turn aside from strategy for a moment to 
answer this. 

When it comes to fancy beverages my own 
taste inclines to Cock-Ale. Of this exotic cordial 
I never heard before; and I am never likely to 
taste it. But here is the recipe, for the curious: 
"Take a Cock of half a Year old, kill him and 
truss him well, and put into a Cask twelve Gallons 
of Ale, to which add four Pounds of Raisins of the 
Sun well pick'd, ston'd, wash'd, and dry'd; Dates 
sliced Half a Pound; Nutmegs and Mace two 
Ounces. Infuse the Dates and Spices in a Quart 
of Canary twenty-four Hours, then boil the Cock 
in a manner to a Jelly, till a Gallon of Water 
is reduced to two Quarts; then press the Body of 
him extremely well, and put the Liquor into the 
Cask where the Ale is, with the Spices and Fruit, 
adding a few blades of Mace; then put to it Half 
a Pint of new Ale Yeast, and let it work well for a 
Day, and, in two Days, you may broach it for Use; 
or, in hot Weather, the second Day; and if it 
proves too strong, you may add more plain Ale to 
palliate this restorative Drink, which contributes 
(82) 



Of Good Ale 

much to the Invigorating of Nature.'* That sounds 
like the real thing. Will no one invite me to a 
dish of Cock- Ale? 

Alas^ the efforts of the gallant author of this 
book were not destined to be long successful. 
That they were operative for a score of years we 
know^ for see what brave John Nyren said, when, 
in old age, he was speaking of the becoming 
revels of his youth on Broad Halfpenny Down 
during the great cricket matches in the seventeen- 
seventies. "The ale, too!" he exclaimed, in a 
famous lyrical passage, "not the modern horror 
under the same name, that drives as many men 
melancholy mad as the hypocrites do; not the 
beastliness of these days that will make a fellow's 
inside like a shaking bog, and as rotten; but bar- 
leycorn, such as would put the souls of three 
butchers into one weaver. Ale that would flare 
like turpentine — genuine Boniface! This immor- 
tal viand (for it was more than liquor) was vended 
at twopence per pint. The immeasureable 
villainy of our vintners would, with their march 
of intellect (if ever they could get such a brewing), 
drive a pint of it out into a gallon." That, as I 
say, was in the seventeen-seventies, and I like to 
attribute the excellence of the Nappy of that day 
to the powerful although alas ! fleeting influence of 
The London and County Brewer, 



(83) 



OF THE BEST STORIES 

I WAS reading the other day that that most 
amusing of clerks in holy orders, who writes 
Irish farcical stories over the pseudonym: "G. A. 
Birmingham," but is known to the angels as Canon 
Hannay, has given it as his opinion that the best 
funny thing ever said is Charles Lamb's reply to 
the doctor who recommended him to take a walk 
on an empty stomach. "Whose?" inquired Lamb. 
That certainly is among the best of the comic 
remarks of the world ; but why does Canon Hannay 
put it down to Lamb? All my life I have been 
associating it with another humorous clerk in holy 
orders and also a canon, the Rev. Sydney Smith, 
and it is to be found in every collection of his 
good sayings. Canon Hannay, who is normally so 
eager to give the Church even more than her 
due, — for did he not create out of "J. J." the 
curate a super-magazine-hero, blending Sherlock 
Holmes, Captain Kettle, and Terence Mulvaney 
in one? — Canon Hannay, one would think, would 
have naturally allotted Sydney Smith everything. 
Moreover, the joke is more in Sydney Smith's way 
than in Lamb's; not because Lamb was not expert 
at that peculiar variety of nonsense, but because 
Lamb had a passion for walking, and rarely, I 
should say, suffered from any maladv needing this 
(84) 



Of the Best Stories 

particular remedy; whereas the witty canon was 
a diner-out, addicted to gout and other table afflic- 
tions, and a walk on an empty stomach would 
probably have done him a world of good. 

And now I lay aside my pen for a few moments 
in order to wonder what my own favourite story 
is, and have the usual difficulty in remembering 
any stories at all. Searching my memory, I find 
that Lamb comes up first, which is not unnatural, 
for in the stories which most appeal to me there 
must be irresponsibility rather than malice. Malice 
is easier, for one thing, and the laughter it causes 
is of an inferior quality. That touch of gay non- 
sense which Lamb had, and Sydney Smith had, is 
worth (to me) all the brilliant bitternesses. This 
time, too, it is authentic Lamb, and not Brum- 
magem. My momentary choice is Lamb's reply to 
the reproach of his India House superior, "You 
always come late to the office." *'Yes, but see 
how early I leave!" That could not easily be 
beaten. 

Lamb, however, did not consider that his best 
thing. We have it on evidence that he thought 
his not too kindly remark to his friend Hume on 
the size of Hume's family his best joke; but I, 
for one, do not agree with him. Hume, it seems, 
was the father of a numerous brood, and he hap- 
pened once to be so ill-advised as to mention his 
paternal achievement, apparently with pride, in 
Lamb's presence. "One fool," quoted Lamb, 
"makes many." Personally, I don't much esteem 
this story, not only because it is a score off a 

(85) 



Cloud and Silver 

simple creature, and a rather too facile one at 
that, but also because it comes into the category 
of those sayings which the joker must himself 
have reported, or which the recipient of the witti- 
cism could not well report except resentfully. We 
can imagine the auditor of the priceless reply, 
"But see how early I leave/' after recovering 
from the stunned condition into which its tre- 
mendous irrelevance and foolishness knocked him, 
hurrying away in perplexity to report it in all its 
incredibleness to fellow-officials: "What on earth 
do you think that that mad creature Lamb has 
just said to me?" and so on. But one does not 
see Hume hastening round to spread that family 
joke. Lamb, or another, must himself have 
done it. 

Similarly, when the Austrian journalist Saphir, 
who said so many witty things, met an enemy 
in a narrow passage, and on the enemy remarking, 
"I'll not make way to let a fool pass," pressed 
himself against the wall, saying, "But I will," it 
must have been Saphir who took the glad tidings 
round Vienna. A man, said Lamb (and proved it, 
too), may laugh at his own joke; but I think we 
always rather prefer that it should first get into 
currency by the other fellow's agency. 

And yet, if that rule were strictly followed we 
should lose too many good things, for your true 
humourist scatters his jewels indiscriminately and 
does not reserve them for the fitting ear. 

Sir Walter Raleigh (I mean not the explorer 
but the longest knight) has pointed out that the 
(86) 



Of the Best Stories 

reason why we have comparatively so few records 
of Lamb's jokes is that he made them to simple 
people, who either did not understand how good 
they were, or were not in the way of quoting 
them. As a friend of mine, who does something 
in a waggish line himself, remarked sadly to me 
the other day: *'I am always saying the right 
thing to the wrong people. Some one asked me 
the other day if I had known William Sharp. 
'No,' I said, 'but I once met Wilfrid Blunt,' and 
instead of laughing my friend began to talk seri- 
ously of the Sonnets of Proteus, I have no luck." 
The fact is that what all wits need is a Boswell. 
Without a Boswell it is necessary, if they are to 
be reported, that they must either themselves 
publish their good things or keep on repeating 
them until the right listener hears and notes them. 
Had there been a Boswell for Lamb. . . . But 
Lamb could not have endured one. 

Having reached that point in this discursion, 
I sallied forth to the haunts of men to collect 
other opinions as to the best story. One of them 
at once gave Sydney Smith's reply to the little 
girl who was stroking the tortoise's shell, "be- 
cause the tortoise liked it." "As well stroke the 
dome of St. Paul's," said Sydney, "to please the 
Dean and Chapter." A second choice shakes me 
seriously in my own selection, for it ranks high 
indeed among the great anecdotes. Sam Lewis, 
the money-lender, was, at Monte Carlo, a regular 
habitue of the Casino. One day he bade every 
one farewell. *'I shan't see you for a fortnight 

(87) 



Cloud and Silver 

or so/' he said; "I'm off to Rome," "Rome?" 
they inquired in astonishment. "Yes. I'm told 
it's wonderful." Two or three nights later he was 
back in his seat at the gambling table. "But what 
about Rome?" his friends asked. "You can 'ave 
Rome," said Sam. 

A third offered an historic dialogue from the 
Lobby. It seemed that an M.P., whom we will 
call X., somewhat elevated by alcohol, insulted 
another M.P., whom we will call Y., as he passed 
through that sacred apartment, by calling him "a 
fool." Y., stopping, said severely and pity- 
ingly, "X., you're drunk. I shall take no notice 
of what you say." "I know I'm drunk," replied 
X., "but I shall be all right to-morrow. You're 
always a fool." 

Since writing the last paragraph I have asked 
two more friends for their favourite stories. One 
of them at once gave me Whistler's comment on 
reading in the Reminiscences of W. P. Frith, R.A., 
painter of "The Derby Day," that as a youth it 
was a toss-up which he became: an auctioneer or 
an artist. "He must have tossed up," said Whistler. 
The other choice was American and more cynical. 
A man's wife had died, and on the morning of the 
funeral the man was found sitting on his door- 
step whistling gaily as he whittled a stick. One 
of the mourners remonstrated. It was most un- 
seemly, he pointed out, that the widower should 
be thus employed on the day on which they were 
bearing to her last resting-place the remains of 
a woman so beautiful in person and in character — 
(88) 



Of the Best Stories 

a faithful wife, a fond mother, an inspiration and 
model to the neighbourhood. "Don't you realise 
that she was all this?" the scandalised guest in- 
quired. "Oh yes," said the husband, "but — I 
didn't like her." 

And now, having set down all these examples, 
I remember what probably is the best good thing 
of all. For, as every one knows, there is some 
malign fate which has provided that one's mem- 
ory shall always be a little late when the best 
stories are being swapped. But better late than 
never. Dumas pere, it may not be generally 
known, had African blood. He also was the father 
(like the great Sheridan) of a witty son. Said 
Dumas fils one day, of his sublime sire: "My 
father is so vain and ostentatious that he is capable 
of riding behind his own carriage to persuade peo- 
ple that he keeps a black servant." Having 
recalled that of Dumas fils, here is the best story 
that I know of Dumas pere. Perhaps it is as 
good a story as has ever been told of any egoist. 
Coming away from dinner at a house noted for its 
dulness, he was asked by some one if he had not 
been dreadfully bored. "I should have been," he 
replied, "if / hadn't been there." 

But of course these are not the best stories. 
Another day's memory would yield far better ones. 



(89) 



OF MONOCLES 

NO man" — ^the wife of one of our most famous 
novelists was speaking — "can wear a single 
eyeglass and not be in some respects a fool." 
I considered for a while, and then told her 
that I thought she was too sweeping; but she 
would not give way. In so far as that the presence 
of one eye only with a window to it imparts a ludi- 
crous appearance, which can easily be consonant 
with folly, she is right; but there are exceptions. 
Take the case of Mr. Dennis Eadie as an instance; 
for right through The Man Who Stayed at Home 
he suggested folly and inoperativeness, only that 
his final triumph of cleverness might be the more 
complete. The lady has, however, all the tradi- 
tion of the stage on her side, for the first instinct 
of any actor cast for the part of a Society ass is 
to provide himself with a monocle. 

The facial distortions and contortions necessary 
for the adjustment of the monocle have indeed 
made the fortune of more than one piece; and 
the implement itself has done much for others. 
Lord Dundreary I never saw, but I take it that 
it was he, or rather the great Sothern, who fixed 
the place of the eyeglass in dramatic history, 
and thus in the mind of the public. Mr. G. P. 
Huntley I see as often as I can manage, and he 
(90) 



Of Monocles 

it is who is chiefly instrumental in keeping the 
eyeglass convention alive to-day. Without it he 
would be only half as delightful as he always is. 
None the less, one or two o^ the astutest men that 
I know wear these things, and the late Mr. Joseph 
Chamberlain, whatever there may have been 
against him, was not often charged with foolish- 
ness. But Mr. Chamberlain did as much to dignify 
the monocle as other men have done to make it 
absurd. 

I suppose that the date of the first appear- 
ance of the monocle is known; but my encyclo- 
pgedia does not condescend to such trifles. Spec- 
tacles it knows all about. Spectacles, it seems, 
were invented either by Alessandro di Spina, a 
monk who died at Pisa in 1313, or Salvino degli 
Amati, who died in Florence four years later. 
Somehow I had thought of the Chinese, always 
so anticipatory of civilisation, as owning the credit 
for this invention; but it is pleasant to be able 
to place it with our Allies. Having stated the fact, 
however, the encyclopaedist, in the usual style of 
such imparters of information, goes on to cloud 
the issue and bemuse the student by saying that an 
Arab writer of the eleventh century mentions 
them. So there you are! But nothing of the 
monocle. 

It is, I suppose, the want of balance, the asym- 
metry of the single eyeglass, that has largely 
brought it under suspicion; and also the circum- 
stance that peculiarities of sight are not much 
understood by the people, with whom ridicule 

(91) 



Cloud and Silver 

starts. If working-men ever wore single eyeglasses 
we should hear little on the subject; but so long 
as — as at present — a navvy in a monocle would 
be a more rare and amazing phenomenon than a 
submarine in Pall Mall_, so long will the unfor- 
tunate possessor of one good eye and one defective 
one be a figure of fun to the masses. A man may 
have one crutch, or one arm in a sling, and no one 
laughs; but for one eye only to be defective and 
therefore glazed, while the other is sound and 
therefore nude, is a perpetual and gigantic joke. 

Much of the ridicule caused by monocles is 
based also on scepticism. I believe that if a 
plebiscite could be taken it would be found that 
the vast majority of people are convinced that 
single eyeglasses are an affectation. No doubt 
that is so in many cases. No doubt many a youth 
wishing, as one might euphemistically put it, to 
graduate at the University of Barcelona, has paid 
as much attention to acquiring the art of wearing 
an eyeglass as to the choice of socks or the arrange- 
ment of his chevelure. Many an older man coming 
whole-heartedly into the classification of the nov- 
elist's wife quoted above has also, though sound of 
vision, deliberately selected the monocle as a sym- 
bol of doggishness or aristocracy. Such impostors, 
harmless enough, but far from admirable, civilisa- 
tion can always produce. 

Yet a residuum of genuine monocle-wearers 

remains, certain representatives of which I am 

happy to number among my friends. Among 

these is one, not unconnected with literature, who 

(92) 



Of Monocles 

is almost blind without his auxiliary. To him, 
however, the thing is a matter of jest, and in mo- 
ments of levity he will transfer it to his forehead, 
cheek, or even the tip of his nose. He carries no 
cord, but in his pockets is a reserve supply of 
glasses, so that if one falls and breaks (as always 
happens) another can instantly supply its place. 
And once I knew a woman who wore a monocle; 
and a frightening figure she was. That it was 
necessary was proved by the size of the eye seen 
through it, which was magnified inordinately. 
Even without this appurtenance she would have 
been uncannily masculine, and, like all masculine 
women, a horror; but with it she terrified my 
youthful life. Whatever may be said for the 
monocle, one thing is certain, and that is that it is 
not woman's wear. 



(9») 



OF SLANG ^ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 

I WAS hearing the other day of a famous girls' 
school where slang is forbidden. A certain 
caprice, however, marks the embargo, for "top- 
ping'* is permitted although "ripping" is on the 
black list. Personally I wish that at all schools 
slang of every kind was strictly discouraged, for 
it leads to the avoidance of any effort to be pre- 
cise in speech; it tends to slovenliness. At lunch 
recently, for example, I sat next a young woman, 
a mother, who was telling me of her experiences in 
Venice. I asked her what she thought of that 
city of wonder. "Topping," she replied, and then 
added, thoughtfully, "Topping." Now I did not 
expect her to deliver a lecture on the charms of 
Venice and to give me an analysis of her many 
emotions on first seeing them, but I confess that 
I was looking for something a little more descrip- 
tive than the word she selected. There is no 
doubt that Venice is topping, but then so is the 
cooking at the Focus, and so is the new revue at 
the Futility, and so is the dress your cousin wore 
at her coming-out dance, and so is Miss Hieratica 
Bond's new novel. 

The trouble with English slang is that it is 
seldom descriptive, seldom paints pictures, seldom 
contains an idea. Probably no word signifying 
(94) 



Of Slang — English and American 

excellence has been so much used as *'ripping/* 
but how does it come to mean that? "Topping" 
one can derive: it savours of the top, the utmost, 
the highest, and has a correlative in "top-hole." 
But "ripping"? No one could derive that. 

American slang is interesting because it applies 
and illustrates. One recognises its meaning in a 
flash of light. Somebody once contraverted the 
statement that America had no national poetry, 
by pointing to her slang; and he had reason. 
American slang very often is poetry, or an admir- 
able substitute for it. It illuminates, synthesises. 
In England we should fumble for hours to find a 
swift description of Sir Oliver Lodge ; an American 
looks at him and says "high-brow," and it is done. 
I was talking a little while ago to the most mer- 
curial and quick-witted comedian on our stage, 
who had but recently returned from America. 
Having made an allusion which I, in my slowness, 
did not at once apprehend, "Ha I" he said, "you're 
on a freight train !" So I was. In other words, I 
was behind him in speed; he had employed a 
recent American phrase to explain delay in the 
up-take. Americans, however, being very thor- 
ough in their neologisms, passengers on freight 
trains have their chances too; and what I ought to 
have replied, while puzzling over his first remark, 
was this: "Snow again, kid. I missed your 
drift." 

Our slang, as I say, seldom describes. Thus, 
it is rich in terms suggestive of imbecility, but 
only one has any descriptive merit, and that is 

(95) 



Cloud and Silver 

"barmy," which means, literally, frothy at the 
top, yeasty. "Dotty," "up the pole," "cracked," 
"potty," these are poor, and do not compare with 
the American "batty" (an abbreviation of "bats 
in the belfry," which, I believe, our cousins have 
recently "side-tracked" for "dippy," an inferior 
word. English slang for the most part is adopted 
from whimsicality: it is used to give variety to 
speech, not to supply word-pictures. Fixed rules 
determine its manufacture, inversion being one of 
the most common. Thus, a boy arriving at school 
with the name of White would probably be called 
Blacky within twenty-four hours. Another rule 
is association. Thus a boy whose name was Mar- 
shall would be called Snelgrove. A third rule is 
abbreviation, which, operating upon association, 
would turn Snelgrove to Snell or Snell}'^ in a week. 
And that would be the end: he would be Snelly 
for all time to his contemjDoraries. 

On such lines does most English slang run — 
being rather a supplementary language than an 
alternative. When young Oxford suddenly began 
to substitute "er" for the ordinary termination of 
a word, it was not making slang so much as diver- 
sifying and idiotising conversation. Thus a bed- 
maker was transformed to a "bedder," breakfast to 
"brekker," and the waste-paper basket, by a des- 
perate effort, became the "wagger pagger bagger" 
— to be subsequently surpassed when the Prince of 
Wales arrived at Magdalen, and was known as the 
"Pragger Wagger": he who only a short time be- 
fore, at Osborne, on the older principle of inver- 
(96) 



Of Slang — English and American 

sion, had been called "Sardines." I know a family 
lost to shame which substitutes the word "horse" 
for the last syllable of words, and thus removes 
gravity; and another even more lost where the 
letter N fitfully takes the place of other initial 
consonants, so that "a walk in the garden" be- 
comes "a nalk in the narden," also with risible 
results. But this is not slang. Slang is an alter- 
native word not necessarily descriptive at all but 
as a rule stronger than the word whose place it 
takes. 

Of all the exasperating forms of speech in which 
English street humourists indulge, there is none so 
strange as rhyming slang. 

"How's the bother and gawdfers?" I heard a 
porter in Covent Garden ask, by way of after- 
thought, loudly of a friend from whom he had just 
parted. "They're all right," was the shouted 
reply; and I went on my way in a state of be- 
wilderment as to what they were talking about. 
What was a bother and what a gawdfer? I could 
think of nothing except possibly some pet animal, 
or a nickname for a mutual friend. In a higher 
commercial rank they might have been gold mines. 
Among soldiers they would have been officers. I 
asked a few acquaintances, but without any result, 
and so made a note of the sentence and dismissed 
it until the man who knows should arrive. 

In course of time I found him. 

"What are a bother and a gawdfer.^" I asked. 

"A wife and kid, of course," he said. ("Of 
course!'* Think of saying "of course" there.) 

(97) 



Cloud and Silver 

I looked perplexed, and he added: "Rhyming 
slang, you know. Wife is 'bother and strife/ Kids 
are *God forbids/ And then, according to the rule, 
the rhyming word is eliminated and the other is 
the only one used;" and we settled down to discuss 
this curious development of language and the Lon- 
doner's mania for calling nothing by its right 
name. 

When an American is asked a question for which 
he has no answer, and he says, "Search me," he is 
emphasising in a striking and humorous way his 
total lack of information on that point. When he 
calls a very strong whisky "Tangle-foot," he indi- 
cates its peculiar properties in unmistakable 
fashion in the briefest possible terms. But when 
a Londoner asks another after his "bother and 
gawdfers," there may be a certain asinine funni- 
ness in the remark, but there is neither cleverness 
nor colour. He might as well have said "wife and 
kids," whereas, when Americans use a slang word, 
it is because it is better than the other word. In 
American slang every phrase, like the advertise- 
ment pictures, "tells a story." 

The silliness of rhyming slang is abysmal. 
Look at this sentence: "So I took a flounder to 
the pope, laid my lump on the weeping, and did 
a plough." That is quite a normal remark in any 
public bar. It means that the speaker went home 
in a cab and was quickly asleep. Why.^ Because 
a cab is a flounder and dab; one's home is the 
Pope of Rome, a head is a lump of lead, a pillow 
is a weeping willow, and to sleep is to plough the 
(98) 



Of Slang — English and American 

deep. A certain bibulous and quarrelsome peer 
was told by a cabman that he hadn't been "first 
for a bubble." It was probably only too true; but 
what do you think it means? It meant that he 
hadn't been First of October for a bubble and 
squeak: reduced to essentials, sober for a week. 

All this and more my friend told me. Here are 
some anatomical terms. The face is the Chevy, 
from Chevy Chase; the nose is I suppose, this 
being one of the cases where the whole phrase is 
always used; the brain is the once again, short- 
ened to once; the eye is a mince, from mince pie; 
the hand is bag, from bag of sand; the arm the 
false, from false alarm. A certain important part 
of one's anatomy is the Derby, or Derby Kell, 
from one Derby Kelly, and the garment that covers 
it is the Charlie, from Charlie Prescott; but who 
these heroes were I have not discovered. A collar 
is an Oxford, from Oxford scholar. Nothing, you 
see, is gained by rhj'^ming slang; no saving in time; 
and often indeed the slang term is longer than the 
real word, as in tie, which is all me, from all me 
eye, and hat, which is this and that in full. 

Your feet are your plates from plates of meat; 
your boots are your daisies, from daisy roots; your 
teeth are your Hampsteads, from a north London 
common; money is don't be, from don't be funny; 
the fire is the Anna, from Anna Maria. Whisky 
is I'm so, from I'm so frisky; beer is pig's ear in 
full; the waiter is the hot, from hot pertater; and 
so forth. 

And these foolish synonyms are really used, 

(99) 



Cloud and Silver 

too, as you will find out with the greater ease if 
(as I did) you loiter in the Dolly. "In the 
Dolly?" you ask. Oh, if you want any more in- 
formation let me give it: in the Garden — Co vent 
Garden, from Dolly Varden. 

But what I want now to know is the extent of 
the rhyming vocabulary and the process by wliich 
new words are added to it. Who invents them and 
how would they gain currency.^ That question my 
friend could not answer. 



(100) 



OF A BONZER AUSTRALIAN POET 

AUSTRALIA has its slang too, and some no- 
tion of its quality may be obtained, together 
with a certain play of the emotions, from a little 
book recently published in Sydney entitled The 
Sentimental Bloke, by C. J. Dennis, which has so 
authentic a note that I think others may like to 
know of it too. 

The Sentimental Bloke is one Bill, lately a Mel- 
bourne crook, but now, through love of Doreen, 
on the straight. The brief autobiography set out 
in these fourteen poems relates his loneliness, his 
meeting with Doreen, his surrender to her charm 
and the transfiguration of the world in consequence 
(all the old material, you see; but who wants any- 
thing new.'^), a lover's quarrel, the visit to Doreen's 
mother, the visit to the clergyman who is to tie 
the knot, the tying of the knot, the move to the 
country, and the birth of a son. That is all. But 
by virtue of truth, simplicity, and very genuine 
feeling, the result, although the story is related 
in a difficult argot which usually is anything but 
lovely, is convincing and often almost too moving 
to be comfortable. Indeed I know for a certainty 
that I should avoid any hall where these poems 
were being recited, not because I should not like 
to hear them, but because I should not dare. And 

(101) 



Cloud and Silver 

recited they oiiglit to be: an entertainer with a 
sympathetic voice and a sense of drama could make 
his own and Mr. Dennis's fortune by a judicious 
handling of this book. 

Bill meets his fate in the market "inspecting 
brums at Steeny Isaacs' stall" — a brum being 
any piece of tawdry finery (from Birmingham). 

'Er name's Doreen . . . Well, spare me bloomin' days! 

You could er knocked me down wiv arf a brick ! 
Yes, me, that kids meself I know their ways. 
An' 'as a name for smoogin' in our click ! 

I just lines up an' tips the saucy wink. 

But strike! The way she piled on dawg! Yer'd think 
A bloke was givin' back-chat to the Queen . . . 
'Er name's Doreen. 

Having no luck with Doreen at first, he resorts 
to guile, and a little later obtains an introduction. 
A friend having led her up to him: 

"This 'ere's Doreen," 'e sez. I sez "Good day." 
An', bli'me, I 'ad nothin' more ter say! 

I couldn't speak a word, or meet 'er eye. 

Clean done me block! I never been so shy, 
Not since I wus a tiny little cub, 
An' run the rabbit to the corner pub — 

Wot time the Summer days wus dry an' 'ot — 
Fer my ole pot. 

Me! that 'as barracked tarts, an' torked an' larft, 
An' chucked orf at 'em like a phoner graft ! 

Gorstrooth! I seemed to lose me pow'r o' speech. 

But 'er! Oh, strike me pink! She is a peach! 
(102) 



Of a Bonzer Australian Poet 

The sweetest in the barrer! Spare me days, 
I carn't describe that diner's winnin' ways. 

The way she torks ! 'Er lips ! 'Er eyes ! 'Er hair ! , . . 
Oh, gimme air ! 

'Er name's Doreen. . . . An' me — that thort I knoo 

The ways uv tarts, an' all that smoogin' game ! 
An' so I ort; fer ain't I known a few? 

Yet some'ow ... I dunno. It ain't the same. 

I carn't tell wot it is; but, all I know, 
I've dropped me bundle — an' I'm glad it's so. 

Fer when I come to think uv wot I been . . . 
'Er name's Doreen. 

Then they walk out together, and one summer 
night Bill promises her to renounce his old com- 
panions : 

Fer 'er sweet sake I've gone and chucked it clean: 
The pubs and schools an' all that leery game. 
Fer when a bloke 'as come to know Doreen, 

It ain't the same. 
There's 'igher things, she sez, for blokes to do. 
An' I am 'arf behevin' that it's true. 

Yes, 'igher things — that wus the way she spoke; 

An' when she looked at me I sorter felt 
That bosker feelin' that comes o'er a bloke. 

An' makes 'im melt; 
Makes 'im all 'ot to maul 'er, an' to shove 
'Is arms about 'er . . . Bli'me? but it's love! 

That's wot it is. An' when a man 'as grown 

Like that 'e gets a sorter yearn inside 
To be a little 'ero on 'is own; 

An' see the pride 
Glow in the eyes of 'er 'e calls 'is queen; 
An' 'ear 'er say 'e is a shine charapeen. 

(108) 



Cloud and Silver 

"I wish*t yeh meant it," I can 'ear 'er yet, 

My bit o' fluff! The moon was shinin' bright, 
Turnin' the waves all yeller where it set — 

A bonzer night! 
The sparklin' sea all sorter gold an' green; 
An' on the pier the band — O, 'Ell! . . .Doreen! 

Then Doreen insists on his visiting her widowed 
mother^ and after many postponements he does so. 

I'd pictered some stern female in a cap 
Wot puts the fear o' Gawd into a chap. 

An' 'ere she wus, aweepin' in 'er tea 
An' drippin' moistcher like a leaky tap. 

Clobber? Me trosso, 'ead to foot, wus noo — 
Got up regardless, fer tliis interview. 

Stiff shirt, a Yankee soot split up the back, 
A tie wiv yeller spots an' stripes o' blue. 

Me cuffs kep' playin' wiv me nervis fears. 
Me patent leathers nearly brought the tears; 

An' there I sits wiv, "Yes, mum. Thanks. Indeed?" 
Me stand-up collar sorin' orf me ears. 

"Life's 'ard," she sez, an' then she brightens up. 
"Still, we 'ave alwus 'ad our bite and sup. 

Doreen's been sich a help; she 'as indeed. 
Some more tea, Willy? 'Ave another cup." 

Willy! O, 'Ell! 'Ere wus a flamin' pill! 
A moniker that alwus makes me ill. 

"If it's the same to you, mum," I replies, 
"I answer quicker to the name of Bill." 

An' then when Mar-in-lor an' me began 

To tork of 'ouse'old thmgs an' scheme an' plan, 

A sudden thort fair jolts me where I live: 
"These is my wimrain folk! An' I'm a man!" 
(104) 



Of a Bonzer Australian Poet 

It's wot they calls responsibility. 

All of a 'eap that feelin' come to me; 

An' somew'ere in me 'ead I seemed to feel 
A sneakin' sort o' wish that I was free. 

'Ere's me 'oo never took no 'eed o' life, 
Investin' in a mar-in-lor an' wife: 

Some one to battle fer besides meself, 
Somethink to love an' shield frum care and strife. 

It makes yeh solim when yeh come to think 

Wot love and marridge means. Ar, strike me pink ! 

It ain't all sighs and kisses. It's yer life. 
An' 'era's me tremblin' on the bloomin' brink. 

An' as I'm moochin' 'omeward frum the car 
A suddin notion stops me wiv a jar — 

Wot if Doreen, I thinks, should grow to be 
A fat ole weepin' wilier like 'er Mar! 

O, 'struth! It won't bear thinkin' of! It's crook! 
An' I'm a mean, unfeelin' dawg to look 

At things like that. Doreen's Doreen to me, 
The sweetest peach on w'ich a man wus shook. 

Love is a gamble, an' there ain't no certs. 
Some day, I s'pose, I'll git wise to the skirts. 

An' learn to take the bitter wiv the sweet . . . 
But, strike me purple ! "Willy !" That's wot 'urts. 

Bill's next ordeal is the interview with the 
parson: 

"Young friend," 'e sez . . . Young friend! Well, spare 
me days ! 
Yeh'd think I wus 'is own white-'eaded boy — 
The queer ole finger, wiv 'is gentle ways. 

"Young friend," 'e sez, "I wish't yeh bofe great 
joy." 

(105) 



Cloud and Silver 

The langwidge that them parson blokes imploy 
Fair tickles me. The way 'e bleats an' brays ! 
"Young friend," 'e sez. 

"Young friend," 'e sez . . . Yes, my Doreen an' me 

We're gettin' hitched, all straight an' on the square, 

Fer when I torked about the registry — 

O, 'oly wars ! yeh should 'a seen 'er stare ; 
"The registry?" she sez, "I wouldn't dare! 

I know a clergyman we'll go an' see" . . . 
"Young friend," 'e sez. 

Then the wedding, at which Bill is bewildered 
by the parson's questions: 

"An' — wilt — yeh — take — this — woman — fer — to — be — 
Yer — weddid — wife?" . . . O, strike me! 
Will I wot? 

Take 'er? Doreen? 'E stan's there arstin' me! 
As if 'e thort per'aps I'd rather not! — 

All goes well with the ceremony, partly through 
the serenity of Doreen and partly through the 
support of Ginger Mick, the best man; and the 
bride and bridegroom leave for a honeymoon be- 
side the Bay, jumping into the train at the last 
moment, and Bill is in a daze of rapture, but 
comes to himself on hearing the cry "Tickets, 
please": 

You could 'a' outed me right on the spot; 

I wus so rattled when that porter spoke. 
Fer, 'struth! them tickets I 'ad fair forgot! 

But 'e jist laughs, an' takes it fer a joke. 

"We must ixcuse," 'e sez, "new-married folk." 
An' I pays up, an' grins, an' blushes red . . . 

(106) 



Of a Bonzer Australian Poet 

It shows 'ow married life improves a bloke: 
If I'd been single I'd 'a' punched 'is 'ead! 

Finally the son is born: 

Wait? . . . Gawd! ... I never knoo what waitin' meant 
In all me life, till that day I was sent 

To loaf around, vv^hile there inside — Aw, strike! 

I couldn't tell yeh wot that hour was like! 

Three times I comes to listen at the door; 
Three times I drags meself away once more, 

'Arf dead wiv fear; 'arf filled wiv tremblin' joy. 

An' then she beckons me, an' sez — "A boy!" 

"A boy!" she sez. "An' bofe is doin' well!" 
I drops into a chair, an' jist sez — '"Ell!" 

It was a pray'r. I feels bofe crook an' glad . . . 

An' that's the strength of bein' made a dad. 

She looks so frail at first, I dursn't stir. 
An' then, I leans across an' kisses 'er; 

An' all the room gits sorter blurred an' dim . . . 

She smiles an' moves 'er 'ead. "Dear lad ! Kiss 'im." 

Near smothered in a ton of snowy clothes, 
First thing, I sees a bunch o' stubby toes. 

Bald 'ead, termater face, an' two big eyes. 

"Look, Kid," she smiles at me. "Ain't 'e a size?" 

'E didn't seem no sorter size to me; 
But yet I speak no lie when I agree. 

"'E is," I sez, an' smiles back at Doreen. 

"The biggest nipper fer 'is age I've seen." 

But 'struth! 'e is king-pin! The 'ead serang! 

I mustn't tramp about, or talk no slang; 
I mustn't pinch 'is nose, or make a face, 
I mustn't — Strike! 'E seems to own the place! 

(107) 



Cloud and Silver 

Cunnin'? Yeh'd think, to look into 'is eyes, 
'E knoo the game clean thro'; 'e seems that wise. 
Wiv 'er an' nurse 'e is the leadin' man, 
An' poor ole dad's amongst the "also ran." 

"Goog, goo," he sez, an' curls 'is cunnin' toes. 
Yeh'd be surprised, the 'caps o' things 'e knows. 

I'll swear 'e tumbles I'm 'is father, too; 

The way 'e squints at me, and sez "Goog, goo." 

I think we ort to make 'im something great — 
A bookie, or a champeen 'eavy-weight : 

Some callin' that'll give 'im room to spread. 

A fool could see 'e's got a clever 'ead. 

My wife an' fam'ly! Don't it sound all right! 

That's wot I whispers to meself at night. 

Some day, I s'pose, I'll learn to say it loud 
An' careless; kiddin' that I don't feel proud. 

My son! ... If ther's a Gawd 'Go's leanin' near 
To watch our dilly little lives down 'ere, 
'E smiles, I guess, if 'E's a lovin' one — 
Smiles, friendly-like, to 'ear them words — My son. 

These few extracts prove not only the sound 
human character of the book: touches of experi- 
ences common to millions of us; but they show 
also that Mr. Dennis has a mastery of his instru- 
ment. In almost no stanza could prose have been 
more direct, and yet there is music here too, a 
great command of cadences and a very attractive 
use of repetition. 

And now a word as to Melbourne slang, for 
some of the phrases in these quotations may not 
quite tell their own story. With solicitude for his 
(108) 



Of a Bonzer Australian Poet 

reader Mr. Dennis has provided a very full glos- 
sary, from which one gathers that many slang 
words are common to England, Australia, and 
America. But Australia has her own too; and 
none of them quite first-rate, I think. I take 
them in the order in which they appear above. 
"Smooging" is billing and cooing; a "click" is a 
clique or "push," "push" meaning crowd. To "pile 
on dawg" is to give oneself airs: as we should say, 
to swank. "Clean done me block !" means flus- 
tered, lost one's head. "Running the rabbit" is 
fetching drink. "Old pot" is old man. A "cliner" 
is an unmarried young woman. A "tart," in Mel- 
bourne, is any young woman, a contraction of 
"sweetheart." To "drop your bundle" is to sur- 
render, to give up hope. "Leery" is vulgar, low. 
"Bosher," "boshter," and "bonzer" are adjectives 
signifying superlative excellence. "Shine" is de- 
sirable, and "champeen" a champion. 

We now come to the tea-party. "Clobber," of 
course, is clothes, and "moniker" a name: the East 
End uses both. To "get wise to the skirts" is to 
understand women. A "finger" is an eccentric or 
amusing person. A "king-pin" is a leader. "Dilly" 
means foolish. Everything else, I think, is clear. 

So far I have mentioned only the poems which 
bear upon the drama of Bill's love and marriage. 
But there is an account of Day fighting Night, 
and, later. Night fighting Day, in the manner of 
the prize ring, which should find a place in any 
anthology devoted to that rare branch of literature 
— grotesque in poetry. 

(109) 



OF THE CRUMMLES CODE 

ODD books have come my way not infrequently, 
although never often enough; but rarely has 
a more curious publication strayed into my hands 
than the Theatrical Cipher Code, compiled and 
published at Los Angeles, for the benefit of Mr. 
Crummies when he is in a hurry and in economical 
mood. Not only is it a strange compilation, sup- 
plying a very curious demand; but with its assist- 
ance, were I bold enough to use it, which I am not, 
I could be surrounded, as quickly as an Atlantic 
liner could bring them, by an army of American 
entertainers of every description, capable of work- 
ing every kind of "stunt," singly or in "teams." 
For example, were I to cable the simple word 
"Foliage," a "Dutch-Irish team of knockabouts" 
would be mine. "Foliage" has never meant this 
to me before; hitherto it has meant the leaves of 
trees or a volume of poems by Leigh Hunt; but 
henceforward it will mean a team of Dutch-Irish 
knockabouts, because that is what this invaluable 
volume has decreed. 

Similarly the word "Follower" means "a fun pro- 
voker," and should therefore be a good deal over- 
worked on the wire. Indeed, I wonder that any 
other word is ever used. A "black face banjo 
player" is "Focus"; a "clever act" is "Fogless"; 
(110) 



Of the Crummies Code 

a contortionist is "Foist"; a "genuine gilt-edged 
hit" is "Fomalic"; a "team of skirt dancers 
able to sing" is "Forcible"; a "pretty girl" is 
"Fume"; a "Rube act" is "Fungiform" — Rube 
meanings in America, rustic, from the fact that out 
of every ten yokels nine are named Reuben; "Fim- 
ble" means "desirable chorus girls/' and evidently 
is not used often enough; "Fixture" means "shape- 
ly and good-looking"; "Fitfully" means "not will- 
ing to appear in tights"; "Dorsching" is "a lead- 
ing lady of fine reputation"; "Devolve" means 
"all our people must be ladies and gentlemen"; 
"Despond" is "an actor for genteel heavies"; and 
"Diagrede" is an "encore getter." Let there be 
more Diagredes, say I, so long as they do not recite 
patriotic poems or sing sentimental songs. 

Only a profound philosopher behind the scenes 
could have compiled such an exhaustive work as 
this. Nothing has been forgotten, no contingency 
overlooked. For example, what do you think "Ex- 
hume" means ? And I acquit the compiler of any 
sinister humour in his choice of words, even with 
the case of "P'itfully," quoted above, to make one 
doubt it. "Exhume" means "child's mother must 
accompany," and suggests a thousand complications 
for the management; and "Excitement" means 
"child's mother must have transportation on the 
road and other expenses paid." At the end of most 
messages the cautious manager will probably add 
the word "Frantic," meaning "do not want those 
who cannot deliver the goods," or he may perhaps 
say "Forester," which means "acts that are not 

(111) 



Cloud and Silver 

first-class, and as represented, will be closed after 
the first performance." 

So far all has been respectable. Engagements 
have not necessarily been made, but there has 
been nothing seamy. The code, however, takes the 
whole experience of the stage for its province. 
Thus "Dropwise" means "no contract jumper 
wanted"; "Dross" means "no drunkards wanted"; 
"Drove" means "no kickers wanted," a kicker be- 
ing one who objects to do things outside his own 
department, an unwilling performer; "Drown" 
means "no mashers wanted." Some managers ap- 
parently do not mind a masher, although they ob- 
ject to a kicker and can put up with a drunkard 
so long as he does not jump his contract; but for 
the more fastidious ones who do not want any of 
the four there is a comprehensive word, "Drop- 
worm," which means "no drunkards, contract- 
jumpers, kickers, or mashers wanted." Personally, 
I should use "Dropworm" every time. 

The section entitled "Agent to Manager and 
Manager to Agent" lets a flood of tragic light on 
touring company life. Thus "Bordering" means 
"I cannot get out of here until you send me some 
money." That is from the Agent to the Manager; 
but quite obviously from Manager to Agent is 
"Boring," which means, "If you do not sober up 
at once will discharge you." "Bosom" also must 
be an unpleasant word to find in a telegram: 
"Understand you are drinking." On the other 
hand, what does a Manager say when he receives a 
(112) 



Of the Crummies Code 

telegram with the word "Behalter" — "Our trunks 
are attached for hotel bills" ? 

This little book and the demand which led to 
its supply suggest some of the gigantic ramifica- 
tions of the business of pleasure. One sees the 
whole feverish world of entertainers at work so 
actively as to be unable to write any of its mes- 
sages in full. The human side of it all is brought 
out very vividly by this code: the glimpses of 
stranded mummers in the towns where they did not, 
as stage folk say, "click"; of desperate managers 
resorting too often to the grape, or more probably 
to malt and rye ; of anxious performers waiting for 
telegrams that are to seal their fate, and not know- 
ing the best or worst until it has been de-coded; 
of noisy braggarts in bars and saloons interrupting 
each other with tales of personal triumph at Mil- 
waukee, or Duluth; of dejected parties in cheap 
lodgings hoping for better days. And always one 
comes back to Crummies; all roads lead to that 
masterly creation. "The more I read Dickens," 
said a great writer to me the other day, "the more 
convinced I am that the Crummies chapters in 
Nicholas Nickleby are the high-water mark of his 
comic genius." I share this opinion, and this 
Theatrical Cipher Code, though it comes from Los 
Angeles, whither Mr. Crummies never wandered, 
is yet full of his brave spirit. 



(lis) 



OF ACCURACY 

OPENING recently one of the great frivolous 
illustrated weeklies: those papers in which, 
by reading from left to right, one identifies foot- 
light favourites and peers' second sons — opening 
one of these, I came upon a page of ladies of the 
chorus with whom by a singular chance (for I am 
not naturally much entangled by the stage) I have 
some slight acquaintance. For circumstances hav- 
ing conspired to lure me into one of the many ave- 
nues which lead to or branch from the Temple of 
Thespis, I have been much occupied of late in 
the composition of what with excessive lenience 
Mr. Crummies calls *'lyrics." By this term, which 
to me has always meant something rather sacred, 
a joyful or passionate expression of emotion or 
ecstasy, associated with such names as Shake- 
speare and Herrick, Shelley and T. E. Brown, 
Campion and Lovelace, Mr. Crummies means any 
and every assemblage of words set to music and 
sung by young ladies to audiences. I never hear 
my own efforts in this line called lyrics without 
blushing; but *'lyric" being the accepted phrase, 
just as "comedy," that fine term, is the accepted 
phrase for all forms of dialogue intended to re- 
move gravity, protest is foolish. Those who are so 
temerarious as to accept invitations to Rome must 
(114) 



Of Accuracy 

adopt Rome's vocabulary. Looking then upon the 
page of my new friends in the frivolous weekly 
illustrated paper, I was shocked and horrified to 
discover that out of some eighteen there portrayed, 
only a small proportion were accurately named. 
The names were right, but they were associated 
with the wrong photographs, or, if you prefer it, 
the photographs were right, but they were asso- 
ciated with the wrong names. 

See how many persons that careless sub-editor 
has disillusioned by his happy-go-lucky methods ! 
For it is not only I, who do not really matter, but 
all those dainty-toed, festivous ladies wrongly 
named who have been rendered sceptical. Rightly 
named, they would have been plunged into de- 
light, together with their relations, their friends, 
and their "boys" ; but as it is, all these good people 
are now profoundly impressed by the untrust- 
worthiness of the weekly illustrated press, and in 
grave doubt as to the bona fides of the daily illus- 
trated press too. Imagine the feelings of the 
mother — or, if you will (for you are so desperately 
romantic) the fiance — of Miss Trottie Demury 
when she (or he) sees under the picture the name 
of Miss Birdy Dupois. For Miss Demury is beau- 
tiful, whereas Miss Dupois And then 

imagine the feelings of the mother or fiance of Miss 
Dupois on finding that under her picture is the 
name of Miss Cussie Roe. For Miss Dupois is 

beautiful, whereas Miss Roe And so it goes 

on. All these good people are, I say, not only 

(115) 



Cloud and Silver 

hurt, disappointed, and surprised, but made per- 
manently sceptical. 

There is too much unbelief in the world for so 
many of us thus suddenly to augment the great 
army of doubt. But how can we help it? Speak- 
ing personally, this regrettable occurrence has 
undermined my confidence not only in that par- 
ticular number of the paper but in every issue 
of it that I have ever seen. If on the only occa- 
sion when I have special knowledge I am thus 
deceived, how can I continue to believe in any 
other statement? All the thrills imparted to me 
by gazing in earlier numbers on the ivory smile 
of Miss Dymphna Dent may have been wasted. 
Those too numerous languorous half-lengths were 
probably not Mile. Lala Ratmort at all. Nor am 
I perhaps acquainted with the lineaments, as I 
thought I was, of either Count De Spoons, the 
famous collector of old silver, or Mrs. Debosh- 
Tinker, the beautiful and popular new hostess. 
And those fine young fellows who figure week by 
week in the melancholy Roll of Honour — ^they 
may be misnamed too. So you see what it is to 
have one's faith shattered. 

Has any reader of these words, I wonder, ever 
found perfect accuracy in the newspaper account 
of any event of which he himself had inside knowl- 
edge? Something always is wrong; often, many 
things are wrong. Where, then, is accuracy to be 
found? Where is truth? As the modem Pilate 
might ask. Is there such a thing as truth absolute? 
Outside the war writings of certain pacifists, which 
(116) 



Of Accuracy 

positively crawl with it, I very much doubt if 
there is. 

My experience of truth is that it is granular 
and not solid; a kind of dust or powder. Every 
one of us has some grains of it; but some have 
more than others, and some esteem the material 
more highly than others. When the Psalmist said 
"All men are liars," he was understating the case; 
in his leisure he would have added, "And all men 
are truth-tellers." It is almost impossible to keep 
truth out, successfully to suppress it. It crops 
up everywhere, even in the most unlikely places. 
Deliberate false witness can be full of it. I be- 
lieve that every written sentence, every spoken 
sentence, is almost bound to contain a grain or so, 
even when the speaker or writer is trying hard to 
lie; and when the words are spoken in anger, the 
grains are apt to be numerous. Human nature 
is so complex and contradictory that practically 
everything that can be said of any one has some 
truth in it. But when it comes to truth absolute 
and unqualified — not Diogenes with a searchlight 
such as they flash from Hyde Park Corner on the 
vacant skies could find that. 

As one grows older one grows increasingly sus- 
picious, not only of other people's testimony, but 
of one's own. Memory plays strange and stranger 
tricks; hearing is less exact; vision becomes defec- 
tive. Once upon a time I would state a thing 
with emphasis, and stick to it. Now I state a 
thing with hesitancy, and when the question, "Are 

(UV) 



Cloud and Silver 

3'^ou sure about that?" is put to me, I abandon the 
position instantly. "No," I say, "I am not sure. 
I am no longer sure about anything in the world 
except that death some day is coming." 



i 



(118) 



OF DECEPTION 

PASSING through a provincial town recently, I 
noticed the posters of a touring company who 
were playing a drama which was a great success a 
few years ago. The principal part was being taken 
by a performer of whom, although I keep too many 
stage names in my memory, I had never before 
heard, and small portraits of this histrion were to 
be seen on the hoardings. Underneath these por- 
traits was his name, and underneath his name 
were the words, in large and arresting letters, 
"The Leading London Actor." Were one to be 
asked, apropos of nothing, who is the leading 
London actor to-day, one would reply — what? 
Some few years ago the name of that distinguished 
gentleman who ruled at the Lyceum would nat- 
urally have sprung to the lips. But now.^ Opin- 
ions might differ now: they could not have differed 
then. Anyway, the last name to occur to anybody 
would be that of the performer on this poster. 
And yet, if the poster is to be believed, here is 
the man. 

But, you say, the poster is not to be believed: 
it is only a theatrical advertisement. Subject for 
thought there! Material for soul-searching on the 
part of a profession which when prosperity comes 
to it can take itself seriously indeed. **Only a 

(119) 



Cloud and Silver 

theatrical advertisement/' and therefore — the in- 
evitable corollary runs — not to be swallowed 
exactly whole. Stilly I am not here to moralise 
Crummies (who, one has to remember, never be- 
came Sir Vincent), and, after all, there is no great 
harm done in foisting one's own valuation of one- 
self upon the public, since, unless death untimely 
intervenes, every man finds his true level during 
his own life. No one would accuse this actor of 
any criminal wish to deceive; and even if it were 
criminal, no one would mind, because actors are 
outside so many laws. 

It has been held — and I agree with the saying 
— that the only person worth deceiving is oneself. 
So long as one can do that one is happy, because 
a fool's paradise is, at the time, no worse a para- 
dise than a wise man's, supposing a wise man ever 
to find one. But to deceive other people and not 
oneself must be the hollowest of pleasures. It is 
possible that the profound-looking gentleman in his 
study, with his head on his hand, in this theatrical 
poster, really believes himself to be the leading 
London actor. If so, all I can say is that I envy 
him his frame of mind. It may be, indeed, that 
every actor at heart believes himself to be the lead- 
ing London actor: manque, perhaps, but still It. 
It may be that every actress at heart believes her- 
self to be the leading London actress. I hope so, 
because such self-confidence and self-esteem must 
be delightful possessions, although their sweetness 
is, I suppose, impaired by the knowledge that a 
(120) 



Of Deception 

vindictive or jealous world is fighting successfully 
against one's genius. 

But what of that soldier who recently was sen- 
tenced to ten months' imprisonment for obtaining 
money and hospitality, and even affection, on the 
strength of a forged Victoria Cross — did he believe 
his gallant story? He could not have done so; 
or if he did, then the power of sophistry is vaster 
even than one imagined. For this fellow himself 
arranged for the false V.C. to be made and en- 
graved, preparing the inscription himself, and, 
thus decorated, it was a simple matter in these 
times to be always surrounded by admirers ready 
to put their hands in their pockets. If he be- 
lieved his story, he stands high among the happy 
self-deluders. If not, I do not envy his thoughts 
in the small hours when, though at liberty, he 
could not sleep ; nor in his cell. 

To put oneself in the place of others is never 
easy, and it is possible that even Shakespeare did 
it with less precision than it is customary to think : 
it may be that his genius over-persuades us of his 
success. But I imagine that few feats of under- 
standing are more difficult than for one who hates 
to convey a false impression of himself to get 
inside the skin of such an impostor as this spurious 
V.C. I was sorry that the evidence did not bring 
out more of his real career. He may have not 
been at the war at all; and, on the other hand, 
he may have been in the engagement where he 
claimed to have performed his great deed; and 
he may actually have performed it^ but have done 

(121) 



Cloud and Silver 

so unobserved, and, therefore, unrewarded; and 
then in time he may have persuaded himself that 
he was the victim of oversight, and himself have 
remedied the omission. Impulsive courage and 
careful fraud are by no means incompatible. My 
own feeling, however, is that he was a deliberate 
fabricator. 

The sham hero was deceiving with intent to 
deceive; the leading London actor, it may be, de- 
ceived unconsciously. But sometimes deceit is 
forced upon us, life being so short, and people 
so stupid, and iteration so boring. I know that 
I, for one, who honestly do hate that any false 
impression of myself should obtain, am frequently 
misunderstood on the credit side. There is one 
of my friends, for example, who is firmly con- 
vinced that I am an ornithologist. He arrived 
at this conviction on the strength of a country walk, 
long ago, in which very insecurely I hazarded the 
names of certain birds; and nothing can shake 
him. Many a time have I set him right; but he 
continues to disbelieve me, and I shall try no more. 
*'Oh, you're too modest," he says with a confident 
laugh, and there it lies. Were I to die to-morrow 
and be thought of sufficient interest for an obituary 
notice, and were this friend invited to contribute 
to it, he would say something pretty about my 
wonderful knowledge of bird life. I am certain of 
this. Others (country walks really are very dan- 
gerous) firmly believe that I have profound botan- 
ical learning. I have not; but they themselves 
having none, and I being able to distinguish be- 
(122) 



Of Deception 

tween a daisy and a blue bell, the fable has grown. 
I have long since given up disclaiming this too; 
more probably should I say, "Are you coming out 
with Linnaeus the second ?" It is the only way. 

As one grows older one grows more hardened, 
and each year brings a revision of one's code of 
delicacy. A week or so ago I entered Penzance for 
the first time, and I had not been there an hour 
before a policeman saluted me. Were I meticu- 
lously honest I should, I suppose, have stopped 
to inform him that I could not possibly be the 
person he had thought I was, and in a sense have 
returned him his gesture of honour; but I did 
not. I merely acknowledged his courtesy, and 
fortified him in his delusion either that he had 
seen me before or that I was somebody of im- 
portance. 



'(123) 



OF PLANS FOR ONE MORE SPRING 

{February 1915) 

IT is much on my mind just now that I must not 
waste a minute of the spring that is coming. 
We have waited for it longer than for any before, 
and the world has grown so strange and unlovely 
since spring was here last. Life has become so 
cheap, human nature has become so cruel and 
wanton, that all sense of security has gone. 
Hence this spring must be lived, every moment 
of it. 

I know it is coming, for I had a sudden fore- 
taste this morning. I was conscious of it stirring 
beneath the mould; I could hear it and feel it. 
Moreover, the birds have begun to make sleep 
difficult after six, bless their throats ! The 
thrushes (the darlings !) have begun to perch on 
the topmost spray of the yew tree to try their 
voices. Soon the starlings will be scrabbling at 
the eaves as early as five, confound them! 

Every year I determine to do certain things in 
the spring. This year I must surely do them. 
There is a hedge, I know, in a meadow, under 
which one finds white violets. I must go there. 
Daffodils, too. I know of four certain spots for 
daffodils; not the splendid yellow lilies (as they 
can grow to be) of the London shops — the stately 
(124) 



Of Plans for One More Spring 

and distinguished "Sir Watkin Wynn'* and so 
forth — but the daffodils of the meadows, short 
and sturdy, fluttering in the winds of March, all 
bending their lovely heads together. One at 
least — and I hope two — of those spots I shall 
visit. 

I shall find my first primroses on the banks of 
a stream about two miles away. And one day I 
must do a little gardening — ^not because I like 
digging, for I detest it more almost than any form 
of exercise, except rowing — but in order (a) to 
get the smell of the earth, and (6) to be in the 
company of a robin once more. No other toil, I 
have observed, so bridges the gulf fixed by the 
All-Wise between man and robins as digging — 
turning over the soil. Chopping wood is not bad; 
but digging is best. I know that after two minutes 
of spade-work a robin will arrive on the scene 
and establish himself in the stalls, so to speak. 
Where he comes from will be one mystery, and 
how he learnt that I am there will be another. 
But he will arrive; the marconigraph of the birds 
will be in action; their spy system will again do 
its work. 

There is a copse which the woodmen have been 
clearing this winter. You know, of course, what 
this means. It means that in May the bluebells 
will flood it like an azure sea. Not that I shall 
wait until May to go there, for the anemones come 
first, and the primroses, and now and then an 
early thrush flies scolding from her nest among 

(125) 



Cloud and Silver 

the faggots; but it is going to be the best bluebell 
site about here. 

I know a cowslip field too. There is no need 
to pick any of the other flowers except the violets ; 
all the others are more satisfying as they grow. 
But cowslips must be picked. You pick them 
until you have a big enough bunch to bury your 
face in. Then you bury your face in it. That is 
one of the rules of spring, and if ever it was 
broken, it shall not be this year. 

And I must see about erecting the owl box at 
once, because I can think of nothing more fasci- 
nating than to have a family of owls growing up 
close to the house, and to watch their ghostly 
parents conveying food to them. I do not say, 
of course, that a pair of owls will come merely 
because a home is provided; but they may. Any- 
way, it must not be my fault that they do not. 

And the walks I shall take! That one up the 
bostel at the side of Fronbury, and then along 
the turf among the larks for three miles, and then 
winding down through the beech woods (with the 
tenderest green on them you ever saw) to the 
village of East Tritley. (These are not the real 
names. It is hardly likely that I should give the 
real names: I don't want half London down here!) 
At East Tritley right under the down lives a friend 
in a Tudor manor-house, with a formal garden 
and wainscoting, a picture by Matthew Maris, and 
other delectabilities, and with him I shall have 
tea, and saunter slowly back just as the day is 
turning to evening and the thrushes and black- 
(126) 



Of Plans for One More Spring 

birds are at their best. And as I draw near home 
I shall walk into the evening turmoil of the rookery 
close by. This rackety as a matter of fact, has 
already begun, but at present it is the usual row 
between builders and architects over the specifica- 
tions. Later there will be the jangle of the family 
too. 

The great charm of this walk is the wide pros- 
pect from the top of the downs — some nine hun- 
dred feet up — and then the search, as one descends 
to the plain at the foot, for the boldest primrose: 
that is to say, for that primrose which has suc- 
ceeded in climbing highest up the slopes. Inci- 
dentally, there will be hawks to watch. Now and 
then I shall almost step on a hare in her form. 
Also, there is a bank on the north side of Fron- 
bury, where, if the sun is hot, one is almost sure 
to see an adder or two, and perhaps a grass snake, 
thawing the winter from their bones. 

Another walk will be through Tritley Park, 
among the venerable Spanish chestnuts and the 
deer, to Vests Common, where another friend has 
what the cultured call a pied-a-terre and the simple 
a cottage. The special charm of Vests is that 
it is an oasis of red sand in a district mainly com- 
posed of clay or chalk. Scotch firs and other firs 
are the only trees, save for delicate silver birches 
which in the spring are like green flames; and in 
May the brake ferns begin to force their arched 
necks through the peat like submerged swans. 
Well, Vests Common will be a very constant joy 
to me this spring. I shall roam there continually, 

(127) 



Cloud and Silver 

and, very likely, induce my friend to let me have 
his cottage for a few days directly the nightingales 
are in force. 

What a programme! 



(128) 



"e.c; 



THE letters at the head of this essay do not 
refer to any royal college, or to the late Lord 
Randolph Churchill, or to "Randall Cantuar" (as 
the Archbishop of Canterbury humorously signs 
himself), or to that comforting form of religion 
as dispensed by his great rival the Pope. They 
were copied from a Continental Bradshaw, where 
you find them or not, according as to whether or 
not a train has a Restaurant Car attached to it. 
They stand for Restaurant Cars, those structures 
of brown wood and plate-glass which trains in 
Europe mysteriously pick up and attach to them- 
selves at odd places en route, and again, their 
mission of more or less nourishing the traveller 
fulfilled, as mysteriously shed. 

To Americans I suppose it is nothing to eat at 
a table on a train. But in England there are still 
millions of people who have never in their own 
country partaken of food on railway journeys 
except from nose-bags, and have never crossed 
the Channel. There are also a certain number, 
both English and Americans, who know the 
European Restaurant Car intimately, and deem 
the time spent within it the best part of the 
journey; and there are those who detest it. Of 
the latter am I. 

(129) 



Cloud and Silver 

When the indictment of the Wagon-lit 
Restaurant Cars comes to be drawn up, I shall 
be able to assist very materially. To begin with, 
there is that offensive autocracy on the part of 
the attendant which determines where you are to 
sit, a matter that is much to you and nothing to 
him, and yet upon which he is absolute and un- 
compromising. Never has any one yet, taking 
a seat independently, been permitted to retain it. 
Secondly, there is the considerable item of ven- 
tilation, no middle way being possible between the 
two extremes of suffocating heat and a draught 
that may leave a hundred bitter legacies. I say 
nothing of the discomforts caused by the oscilla- 
tion of the train, through which you pour your 
wine into your neighbour's glass, for that obviously 
is less the fault of the wagon-lit than of the track- 
layer (there is one point between Calais and 
Boulogne where every bottle crashes on its side) ; 
nor is it exactly the car's fault that the people 
who sit opposite you are not only always pro- 
foundly and minutely antipathetic, but are so 
secretive with the salt. 

We pass on then to more personal charges, such 
as the wine, which is always very bad and very 
dear; and the utensils, which those who know 
may be seen polishing afresh with their napkins 
(so that it has become a sign of much travel when 
a man does this) ; and thus we reach the meal 
itself. Here again the caprice of the attendants 
is more marked, a certain type of man always 
having a full selection of hors d'cEuvres set before 
(130) 



"R.C." 

him, including butter, while another group, of 
which I am a birth-right member, is put off with 
only one or at most two varieties, and those 
unpalatable. I have spent more pains to get the 
butter in a Restaurant Car than other men in 
acquiring virtue; but enough indigestible radishes 
have surrounded me to sustain Mr. Bernard 
Shaw's remarkable genius for a week, and enough 
tessellated sausage to pave a bathroom. With the 
rest of the meal it is the same — not only do I 
dislike the food, but others get more than I. Some 
travellers who seem to possess many of the stig- 
mata of the gentleman are able even to ask for a 
second helping. That these men fill me with a 
kind of perverted admiration I will not deny, but 
I cannot imitate them. I cannot interrupt a wagon- 
lit waiter in what seems to be as much a natural 
and irresistible process as the onrush of water 
at Niagara. I have not that courage, that self- 
assertiveness. Nor do I care enough. 

And then the delays between the courses; the 
injustices of the distribution, by which the same 
table again and again gets the first chance at the 
new dish; the strain of the noise of it all, aggra- 
vated by the anxiety that one feels when a waiter 
lurches along balancing a thousand plates at once 
— such are a few only of the damaging criticisms 
which I am prepared to bring against the 
Restaurant Car. 

But (such is the sharpness of the serpent's 
tooth) do you suppose for an instant that any 
single one of these charges would be endorsed by 

(131) 



Cloud and Silver 

the small person of comparatively tender years, 
now at school, whom it is my quaint fortune to 
call daughter and have to clothe and support? 
Not one. Anything less filial than she would 
become if she were asked to back me in the matter 
could not be imagined. For to her the Wagon-lit 
Restaurant Car is the true earthly paradise, and 
travel on the Continent merely a means of grati- 
fying her passion for eating on trains. Her ex- 
pression of joy on taking what in such places 
they call a seat, a stubborn, resisting, struggling 
thing which has to be held down by main force 
before you can occupy it, is amazing. Her happy 
excitement on reading the menu and finding the 
same tiresome dishes is incredible. Her delight 
in every moment of the meal is my despair. But 
no reverses can change her, and if she asks how 
long does it take to get from Paris to Rome, and 
after working out the journey with infinite trouble 
I tell her, it is only that she may compute the 
number of wagon-lit lunches and dinners that 
will fall to her ecstatic lot. She even likes the 
ice-pudding; she even likes her neighbours. 

As a fond father, I say, then, let the Restaurant 
Cars go on. But when peace returns, and Europe 
is again unlocked, and I travel once more (as in 
the Golden Age) from Calais or Boulogne to Paris, 
if I am alone I shall again provide myself with 
the basket from the buffet which contains half a 
chicken and half a bottle of claret and a tiny 
corkscrew and an apple or a pear and bread and 
butter and a piece of Gruyere and a paper napkin, 
(132) 



"R.C." 

and eat it in seclusion in a compartment which 
the other people have left in order that they may- 
avoid each other's eyes, and be balked of sufficient 
nourishment, amid all the clatter and nervousness 
of the Restaurant Car. 



(133) 



THE TWO LADIES 

AFTER reading aloud some of the sketches 
by The Two Ladies (as I always think of 
"Martin Ross" and Miss E. CE. Somerville), and 
in particular "The House of Fahy/' which I have 
always held is one of the best short stories ever 
written, with a last sentence that no one but a 
professional elocutionist with nerves of steel could 
possibly compass, it amused me to imagine a room 
filled with devotees of the Experiences of an Irish 
R.M., such as might as easily exist as a Boz Club, 
capping quotations from that and its companion 
books and finding pleasure in expressing admira- 
tion in the warmest terms and in minute detail; 
and there are not many pleasures greater than 
that. 

The discussion might, indeed, have begun by 
the old question. What are the best short stories 
in the world? and my own insistence on the claims 
of this very "House of Fahy" to a place high on 
the list; because, as I should have urged, it relates 
an episode proper only to the short-story medium; 
there is no word too many or too few; it has 
atmosphere and character; it is absorbing; it has a 
beginning, a middle, and an end — such an end! 

"But what about 'The Maroan Pony'?" some 
one might have inquired. "Isn't that a perfect 
short story too?'* 
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The Two Ladies 

And I should have replied that it is. 

"And 'Harrington's' ?" some one else might have 
urged. "Isn't that perfect? And it has an extra 
quality, for in addition to all the humour of it, 
and the wonderful picture of a country auction 
sale, it has that tragic touch. To my mind it is 
greater than 'The House of Fahy.' " 

And then I am sure that a most emphatic claim 
for "Trinket's Colt" as the best of all would have 
been formulated; and by this time we should have 
been right in the thick of it, all eager to speak 
and be heard. 

To me The Two Ladies have long been the only 
contemporary authors whom it is absolutely neces- 
sary to read twice instantly: the first time for the 
story itself, which is always so intriguing — and 
the more so as you get more familiar with the 
ingenuity of their methods — as to exact a high 
speed; and the second time for the detail, the 
little touches of observation and experience, and 
the amazing, and to an envious writer despairful, 
adequacy of epithet. And having read them twice, 
I find that whenever I pick them up again there is 
something new, something not fully tasted before. 
Indeed, at any rate in the R.M. series, they are 
the most trustworthy and re-readable of any 
writers of our time. 

"Talking of observation and experience" (here 
I resume the report of the imaginary club of 
devotees), one said, "they know everything. That 
they should be wise about hunting and Irish life 
is natural. Hunting and Irish life are their strong 

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Cloud and Silver 

suit. But they know all about the sea too: no one 
has so etched in the horrors of a ground swell on a 
hot day. They know all about servants. They 
know all about dogs — what dogs think and how 
dogs feel." 

"But most remarkable of all/' said another, 
"is their knowledge of man — and married man 
at that. Who would ever have guessed that Major 
Sinclair Yeates was the invention of two single 
women? I cannot find a single slip into sheer 
femininity in all his narratives." 

The superiority of the R.M. stories over the 
others would have given us a wide field for debate ; 
and I should certainly have cited their fellow- 
countryman Goldsmith as an earlier example of 
the greater ease and power that some authors 
attain when they assume an imaginary character. 
For good as their other sketches and novels are. 
The Two Ladies were never so fully armed at 
every point as when they thought themselves 
Major Yeates — ^just as Goldsmith was so much 
more effective when he was the Vicar of Wakefield 
or the Citizen of the World. 

"It is possible/' I might have said, "that all 
collaborators should invent some such personality 
as the Major, to give them common ground on to 
which they can simultaneously step." And the 
case of Addison and Steele and Sir Roger, although 
there was there no impersonation, would perhaps 
have occurred to me. 

Thus we might have begun, and so have passed 
on to the consideration of the work of The Two 
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The Two Ladies 

Ladies as a whole, and have grown happy in the 
excitement of bestowing praise. 

"They are the only humourists/' I seem to hear 
another saying, "who never relax. In the R.M. 
books their whole attitude to life is humorous, 
and so splendid is their sense of duty to their 
readers, that their almost every sentence is humor- 
ous. Do you remember, for example, how when 
Anthony asks his mother what auctions are, that 
confirmed bargain-seeker does not merely tell him, 
as another author might have made her, but 
'instructs him even as the maternal carnivore 
instructs her young in the art of slaughter'? And 
how Flurry's handwriting was 'an unattractive 
blend of the laundress's bill and the rambling 
zigzag of the temperature charts'?" 

"If you are going to begin quoting good 
phrases," I should have said, "I can give you 
plenty. For I have always held that when it 
comes to sheer writing, good writing, clear writing, 
vivid writing, vigilant writing, The Two Ladies 
have no equal and no superior. The art of sug- 
gesting one effect by a reference to another was 
never practised with finer skill than by these 
authors. Do you remember how when the two 
terriers followed Flurry's hunt, their 'yelps 
streamed back from them like the sparks from 
an engine'? and the uneven Irish road which 
'accepted pessimistically the facts of Nature'? and 
the reluctant dog who 'resolved himself into jelly 
and lead'? and how when the R.M. was told by 
Flurry to watch a certain spot for the fox, the 

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Cloud and Silver 

concentration of his eyeglass upon the gap was 
of 'such intensity that had the fox appeared he 
would have fallen into a hypnotic trance' ?" 

"A remarkable thing in their writing," another 
might say, "is their double gift of painting with 
equal power broad landscape and Dutch interiors. 
Some of their rapid Irish backgrounds are mar- 
vels of lucid impressionism, and never a word more 
of it than the story requires. Their instinct for 
saliences in landscape and in all their descriptions 
is indeed marvellous." 

"And their knowledge of their countrymen !" he 
might continue. "Do you remember how they refer 
to an Irishman as always a critic in the stalls 
and yet in spirit behind the scenes too? And 
their Irish idioms ! The whisky that was 'pliable 
as milk' !" 

"Another remarkable thing about them," I hope 
I should have dropped in, "is what one might 
call their all-of-a-pieceness. Their first story and 
their last are equally mellow and mature, although 
years intervened. They forget nothing. The 
R.M. remains the same." 

"And their modesty ! They have added to fiction 
certain characters that will not die for generations 
and may even be immortal — in Flurry Knox, in 
his grandmother, in Slipper, in Maria, in Dr. 
Jerome Hickey — and there has been no flourish of 
trumpets, no heralding. These figures have not 
even had a novel to appear in, but occur casually 
in that previously most negligible literary form — 
the humorous sketch of Irish life. The Real 
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The Two Ladies 

Charlotte, that wonderful creation, it is true, has a 
long novel all to herself; but for one reader 
fortunate enough to know her, there are fifty who 
know the others." 

Finally might come this comment: "They are 
the last really passionate friends of the noble 
animal. Not that they don't understand motor- 
cars; but their attitude to horses is more than 
understanding: it is intimate, sympathetic, humor- 
ous, with a vast tolerance for equine mischief. 
Do you remember the trainer of Fanny Fitz's 
'Gamble' in All on the Irish Shore — ^how he met a 
mare he had once owned, and he did not know 
her but she knew him? It is one of the prettiest 
pieces of writing that ever came out of Ireland. 
It was after the fair at Enniscar, 'an' I was talk- 
ing to a man an' was coming down Dangan Hill, 
and what was in it but herself [the mare] coming 
up in a cart! An' I didn't look at her good nor 
bad, nor know her, but sorra bit but she knew 
me talking, an' she turned into me with the cart. 
"Ho! ho! ho!" says she, an' she stuck her nose 
into me like she'd be kissing me. Be dam, but I 
had to cry. An' the world wouldn't stir her o' 
that till I'd lead her on meself.' And then he 
utters this immortal sentiment: 'As for cow nor 
dog nor any other thing, there's nothing would 
rise your heart like a horse.' — Isn't that beautiful?" 

Thus enthusiastically might we have talked! 

And now the bond has snapped, and "Martin 
Ross," who was Miss Violet Martin, is dead. With 
her death the series stops, for though neither was 

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Cloud and Silver 

the dominant spirit, the prosperity of the work 
demanded both. As to The Two Ladies' method 
of collaboration I know nothing, and should like 
to know all; which held the pen I have no notion, 
or if one alone held it. But that it was complete 
and perfect is proved by this sentence from a 
private letter from one very near to them, which 
I may perhaps take the liberty of quoting, since 
it embodies a remark made by the survivor of the 
many, many years' partnership. "There isn't 
a page, there isn't a paragraph, there isn't a line 
which either of us could claim as her sole work." 
That is collaboration in the highest degree, two 
minds that not only work as one, but are one. 



(140) 



ONCE UPON A TIME 
I The Two Perfumes 

ONCE upon a time there was a common, and 
on it a cottage had been built with a high 
bank beside it, and on this bank grew a lilac-tree 
whose branches hung very near the path, and 
below the lilac was a great mass of rich brown 
wallflowers. 

Looking up one afternoon the lilac saw a way- 
farer approaching. "I hope he will notice me 
and stop," she thought; for she had but a short 
time of blossom, and she knew it, and it gave her 
pleasure to be courted and praised. 

"There's some one coming,*' she said to the 
wallflower. *'He looks rather interesting. I think 
he'll stop." 

"If he does," said the wallflower, "it will be for 
you. I've been going on too long. They're all 
tired of me by now." 

"I don't agree with you," said the lilac. "I 
wish I did. This one looks to me as if he would 
be fond of both of us. I tell you he's nice." 

"Let's have a bet," said the wallflower. "I bet 
you that he pays more attention to you than 
to me." 

"Very well," said the lilac; "and I bet he pays 
more attention to you. How much?" ^ 

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Cloud and Silver 

"Two bees/' said the wallflower. 

"Done/' said the lilac as the man reached 
them. 

He was a middle-aged man^ with a kindly face, 
and he knelt down by the wallflowers and took a 
long draught of them. 

Immediately his years left him and he was a boy 
again. He thought himself in an old garden. The 
walls had toad-flax between the bricks. There 
was a tortoise in the greenhouse. The lawn was 
very bare where he and his brothers and sisters 
played too much cricket. All along the front 
of the house was a bed of wallflowers, and in a 
chair by the window of the dining-room lay a lady 
sewing. Every now and then she looked up and 
smiled at the cricketers. "Well hit!" she would 
say, or "Well caught!" 

Whenever they were out they ran to her for a 
second and kissed her — not long enough to inter- 
rupt the game, but just to let her know that she 
was the most beautiful and adorable creature in 
the world. 

The man's eyes filled with tears. Why did the 
scent of wallflowers always bring back this scene, 
and this only? But it did. 

He reached up and pulled a branch of lilac to 
his face, and straightway he w^as a young man 
again. He was not alone. It was night and the 
moon was shining, and he was standing in the 
garden with a beautiful girl beside him. It was 
the hour of his betrothal. "How wonderful!" 
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Once Upon a Time 

she said at last. "Oh, I am too happy!" And 
again his eyes filled with tears. 

Then once more he buried his face in the wall- 
flowers. . . . 

After he had passed on his way across the 
common, "I've won/' said the lilac sadly. 

"Yes," said the wallflower. "I owe you two 
bees. I won't forget to send them on." 



II The Dog Violets 

Once upon a time there was a patch of dog 
violets growing on a bank in March. They were 
very beautiful but they had no scent, and the 
country people, knowing this, passed them by. 

Day after day the flowers heard scornful re- 
marks about themselves. "They're only dog 
violets," said one of the knowing country people. 
"Don't bother about them," said another. "I know 
where there's real violets," said a third; "come 
on!" 

And since no one likes to be overlooked and 
despised, even though attention should mean 
destruction, the dog violets were very unhappy. 
"As if perfume was everything!" they said; while 
one of them went so far as to declare that she 
always found the scent of the other kind of violets 
overpowering. "A strong scent is so vulgar," she 
added. "Yes," said another, "and so are rich 
colours. Pale tints are much more distinguished." 

One day the princess came driving along from 

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Cloud and Silver 

the royal city in her gold coach^ and seeing the 
patch of flowers on the bank she gave orders for 
the carriage to stop. "Oh^ how beautiful!" she 
said, for, being a princess, she had never seen 
violets growing before; she had seen only tiger- 
lilies and camellias and smilax and Marechal Niels. 
"How beautiful !" she cried, and she bade her lord 
chamberlain bring her a great bunch. 

"Those!" he replied in surprise. "Does not 
your Royal Highness know that they are only 
dog violets; they have no scent." 

"The darlings !" she cried. "It wouldn't matter 
if they had, I've got such an awful cold;" and she 
pressed them to her white bosom, where in an 
ineffable rapture of pride and content they 
swooned away. 

Ill The Devout Lover 

Once upon a time there was a fox who fell in 
love with a pretty little lady fox. He called her 
either Sweet Auburn or Loveliest Vixen of the 
Plain, and in the small hours, when all the world 
was asleep, they went for delightful strolls to- 
gether, and talked a deal of pleasant nonsense, and 
killed numbers of young chickens, and fed each 
other with titbits, as lovers do. 

One day Sweet Auburn casually mentioned her 
approaching birthday, which chanced to be on 
May the 15th, and said she would like nothing 
so much as gloves. 

"What colour?" he asked. 
(14.4) 



Once Upon a Time 

"Purple," she told him; and he agreed. 

"With white and purple spots inside/' she 
added; and he agreed again. 

"And lined with glistening hairs/' she called 
after him; and he agreed once more. 

When, however, he told his mother, the old lady 
was discouraging. "They won't be out by then," 
she said, "fox-gloves won't." 

His mother was a widow. An unfortunate meet- 
ing with the local pack had deprived her for ever 
of her beloved chicken-winner. She had however 
brought up, with much pluck and resource, her 
family, unaided. 

"You'll never get them by the 15th," she added, 
"that's a fortnight too early." 

"But I must," replied her son, with the im- 
petuosity and determination of youth. 

"You'll never," said his mother. 

Undismayed he set forth and searched the coun- 
try-side for fox-gloves. He found many plants in 
various early stages of growth, but all were far 
indeed from the time to exhibit their stock-in- 
trade. 

"What did I tell you ?" said his mother. 

The day drew nearer. He extended his travels, 
but in vain, until one morning, at about a quarter 
to five, when he ought to have been at home again, 
he came upon a fox-glove stalk which actually 
had buds on it. Carefully marking the spot, he 
rushed back with the news. 

"But how can blossoms be ready in four days.''" 
he asked his mother. 

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Cloud and Silver 

''Intensive culture/' said the old lady. "There's 
nothing but that." 

"I don't know what you mean/' said her son. 

"Of course not; you're only a child. It means 
you must supply heat and nourishment. You 
must curl your warm body round that stalk every 
evening as soon as the sun sets and lie there with- 
out moving till the sun's up, and you must water 
the roots with your tears. On no account must 
you move or nap." 

"Really.^" he asked nervously. 

"If you truly love/' said his mother. 

"I wonder," he thought; but after paying an- 
other visit to Sweet Auburn he knew that he did, 
and he promised her the gloves for a certainty. 

Late on the evening of the 15th, when she had 
almost given him up, he staggered into her abode, 
wan and weary, and laid a pair of superb gloves at 
her feet. They were a beautiful purple lined with 
glistening hairs and they had white and purple 
spots inside. 

"Many happy returns," he said. "They're ab- 
solutely the first of the season. You'll be able to 
set the fashion." 

"Darling Reynolds !" she replied, embracing 
him, and named the happy day. 

IV Wireless 

Once upon a time there was a daisy who con- 
ceived a fierce passion for another daisy a few 
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Once Upon a Time 

inches away. He would look at this daisy hour 
after hour with mute longing. It was impossible 
to tell his love^ because she was too far off, for 
daisies have absurdly weak voices. They have 
eyes of gold and the most dazzling linen, but 
their voices are ridiculous. 

One day by happy chance a bronze-wing butter- 
fly flitted into the meadow, and the daisy saw it 
passing from one to another of his companions, 
settling for a few moments on each. Bronze- 
wings are partial to daisies. He was an ingenious 
and enterprising fellow, this flower — something, 
in fact, of a "Card/' as they say in the Five Fields 
— and an idea suddenly came to him which not only 
would enable his dearest wish to be realised but 
might be profitable too. 

It was an idea, however, that could be carried 
out only with the assistance of the bronze-wing, 
and he trembled with anxiety and apprehension 
lest the butterfly should pass him by. 

At last, however, after half a dozen false ap- 
proaches which nearly reduced the daisy to the 
trembling condition of an anemone, the bronze- 
wing settled right on his head. 

"Good afternoon," said the daisy. "You're just 
the person I wanted to see." 

"Good afternoon," said the bronze-wing. 
"What can I do for you?" 

"Well," said the daisy, "the fact is I have a 
message for a lady over there. Would you take 

itr 

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Cloud and Silver 

"With pleasure/' said the bronze-wing; and 
the daisy whispered a loving message to him. 

"Which one is it?" he asked, when ready to 
start. 

"How can you ask? Why, the beautiful one," 
said the daisy. 

"They all look alike to me," said the bronze- 
wing. 

"Foolish myope," said the daisy. "There's only 
one really beautiful one — just over there." 

"All right," said the bronze-wing; "but you 
mustn't call me names," and off he flitted. 

Presently he came back and whispered the reply, 
which was so satisfactory^ that the edge of the 
daisy's dazzling white ruff turned pink. 

"Now," said the bronze-wing, "what about my 
payment ?" 

"Well," said the daisy, "my idea is that you 
should devote yourself wholly to this meadow and 
the daisies in it. There are enough of us to keep 
you going. You won't have to travel and get tired, 
and you'll be safe because no boys with butterfly 
nets" — the bronze-wing shuddered — "have ever 
been seen here. You will become our Mercury and 
keep us all in communication. And in return " 

"Yes?" said the bronze-wing eagerly. 

"In return we will refuse the attentions of other 
visitors; all our honey shall be for you. All our 
energies shall go to providing you with the best." 

"Done," said the bronze-wing. 

"Better make a start at once," said the Card. 
"Here's another message for that ladv;" and he 
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Once Upon a Time 

whispered again, and off the bronze-wing flitted. 

He was soon back with the reply, which turned 
the edges of the daisy's rufF pinker than before. 

"Now tell her this/' said the daisy. 

"But what about the rest of the field?" asked 
the bronze-wing. 

"Never mind about any one else," said the 
lover. 

V The Vaseful 

Once upon a time a little company of the wild 
flowers of spring found themselves together in a 
vase. It was the first time that many of them 
had met; for although they came from the same 
district, indeed the same copse, and had heard of 
each other's characteristics, they had grown up too 
far away from each other for conversation, and 
flowers, of course, cannot walk. It was there- 
fore with peculiar interest that they now examined 
each other and fell a-talking. 

There was naturally a little reserve at first, for 
social grades must be preserved; but they were so 
tightly packed in the vase, and for the most part 
so forlorn at their fate, that barriers soon disap- 
peared, and the oxlip ceased to despise the cow- 
slip, and the cowslip was quite nice to the primrose, 
and the purple orchis almost dropped his aris- 
tocratic drawl when talking to the bluebell. 

The purple orchis, who was not only a heavy 
drinker but rather a bully, was the only one who 
was not unhappy to be there. "I knew I should 

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Cloud and Silver 

attract attention soon^" he said; "there were so 
few of us and we're so noticeable. By Jove, this 
tipple's delicious !" and he took a long draught. 

"Please don't push so/' said a small voice at his 
side. 

"Why, what's the matter.''" the orchis asked. 
"You anemones are always such weaklings." 

"I'm afraid I feel rather faint/' replied the 
anemone. "I'm not strong at any time, it's true, 
and just now, no matter how I stretch, I can't 
quite reach the water. I'm afraid that little girl 
put me in the vase rather carelessly." 

"Or else" — the orchis laughed — "or else I'm 
getting more than my share. Ha, ha !" 

"Surely," said a cowslip to a bluebell, "there 
were more of you in the little girl's hands when 
we left the wood?" 

"Alas, yes/* said the bluebell. "Most of my 
closest friends were picked too, and I hoped we 
were all coming along together. But for some 
reason or other which has never been explained 
to me bluebells seem to be more easily and more 
often thrown away after being picked than any 
other flower; and all my companions must have 
suffered that fate." 

"It is quite true," said the cowslip. "From 
my high position on the bank I have again and 
again seen bunches of bluebells forsaken by chil- 
dren. How is it, I wonder? It is not as if they 
were ugly; although blue is not every one's 
colour." 

"Perhaps," said the cuckoo-spit with a touch 
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Once Upon a Time 

of sarcasm, for he disliked the cowslip, "it's be- 
cause you can't make tea of them." 

"No/' said the oxlip, who was looked up to as 
something of a sage by reason of his strength and 
his many eyes, "it is because bluebells are so much 
more beautiful when they are in a wood among 
greenery than when they are packed together in a 
human hand, and the human hand suddenly real- 
ises this and drops them in disappointment." 

"Thank you," said the bluebell with a sigh of 
content. 

"The wonder," the oxlip continued with a glance 
at the cuckoo-spit, "is that some flowers are ever 
picked at all." 

Silence followed, broken by a little sigh. It was 
the dying anemone's last breath. 

VI Ups and Downs 

Once upon a time towards the end of June the 
birds gathered together to compare notes as to 
the nesting season. It is a regular habit — a kind 
of stock-taking. 

"And what has been your luck?" the owl asked 
the plover. 

"Half and half," said the plover. "My first 
clutch of eggs — beauties they were, too — were 
found by a farm boy, and within a couple of days 
they were being devoured by a pretty actress, at 
one-and-six apiece; but I need hardly say," added 
the plover with a wink, "that it was not the little 
lady herself who paid for them. 

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Cloud and Silver 

"So I laid again/' the plover continued, "and 
this time we pulled through; and this very morning 
I've been giving mj'^ family a lesson in taking 
cover. The difficulty is to make them keep their 
silly little beaks shut M-hen they're in danger: 
they will cheep so, and that, of course, gives the 
show away. Still, chicks will be chicks, you 
know." 

"Yes indeed," replied the owl; "but years will 
put that right only too successfully;" and both 
birds sighed. 

"Yes," said the nightingale to the woodpecker, 
"I managed capitally. I had a wonderful season. 
Every night people came to hear me sing; Caruso 
couldn't have more devoted audiences. We 
brought up a healthy family, too, with strong 
musical tendencies. In fact, it wasn't till yester- 
day that anything Mxnt wrong; and that wasn't 
exactly a calamity, although it hurt me quite a 
little bit." 

"Tell me," said the woodpecker. 

"With pleasure," said the nightingale. "It was 
like this: I flew from the hedge just as that nice 
lady at the Grange came along with her little 
girl, and the little girl saw me and, as children 
always do, — you've all heard them time and 
again, — asked the mother what that pretty brown 
bird was called. Now this, you must understand, 
is the lady who has been leaning out of her win- 
dow every night all through June just to hear me 
sing; she has even written a poem to me; but 
what do you think she said to the little girl in 
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Once Upon a Time 

reply? 'That brown bird, darling? That's only a 
sparrow.' " 

"You've been as immoral as usual, I suppose?" 
said the thrush to the cuckoo. 

"Quite/' said the cuckoo, "if by immorality 
you mean taking furnished lodgings for my family 
instead of going in for small ownership, like you." 

"That's not wholly what I meant," said the 
thrush. "There's such a thing as taking furnished 
apartments and paying for them, and there's such 
another thing as depositing your family there and 
never showing up again." 

"Still," said the cuckoo, "it's a very small fam- 
ily — only one. I never deposit more than one egg 
in each nest." 

"I wish, all the same," said the thrush, "you'd 
tell me why you are so averse from erecting a 
home of your own." 

"I don't exactly know," said the cuckoo, "but 
I think it's fastidiousness. I never can find a site 
to suit me. Either there's no view, or the water's 
bad, or I dislike the neighbours; try as I will, I 
never can settle. So there you are !" 

"And who, may I ask," said the thrush, "has 
had the honour of foster-mothering your illustrious 
offspring this season?" 

"I selected nuthatches," said the cuckoo; "and 
they weren't half disagreeable about it either. 
While as for their own children, the little pigs, 
they couldn't have taken it with less philosophy. 
Grumbled day and night. My poor darlings were 
jolly glad when they were fledged, I can tell you." 

(153) 



Cloud and Silver 

"What are you going to do with them?" the 
thrush asked. 

"I haven't made up my mind/' said the cuckoo. 
"What do you advise.'"' 

"Apprentice them to a builder/' said the thrush 
as he flew away. 

VII The Alien 

Once upon a time a poet was sitting at his desk 
in his cottage near the woods, trying to write. 

It was a hot summer day and great fat white 
clouds were sailing across the sky. He knew that 
outdoors was best, but still he dutifully sat on, 
pen in hand, trying to write. 

Suddenly, among all the other sounds of busy 
urgent life that were filling the warm sweet air, 
he heard the new and unaccustomed song of a 
bird: new and unaccustomed, that is to say, there, 
in that sylvan retreat. The notes poured out, 
now shrill, now mellow, now bubbling like musical 
water, but always rich with the joy of life, the 
fulness of happiness. Where had he heard it 
before? WTiat bird could it be? 

Hastening out with his field-glasses, he tracked 
the sound to a group of elm trees from which pro- 
ceeded sweeter and more tumultuously exultant 
song than they had ever known ; and after a while 
he discerned among the million leaves a little 
yellow bird, with its throat trembling with rapture. 

But the poet was not the only one who had 
heard the strange melody. 
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Once Upon a Time 

"I say/' said a chaffinch to a sparrow, "did you 
hear that?" 

"What?" inquired the sparrow, who was busy 
collecting food for a very greedy family. 

"Why, listen !" said the chaffinch. 

"Bless my soul," said the sparrow, "I never 
heard that before." 

"It's a strange bird," said the chaffinch; "I've 
seen it. All yellow." 

"All yellow?" said the sparrow. "What awful 
cheek !" 

"Yes, isn't it?" replied the chaffinch. "Can you 
understand what it says?" 

"Not a note," said the sparrow. "Another of 
those foreigners, I suppose. We shan't have a tree 
to call our own soon." 

"That's so," said the chaffinch. "There's no end 
to them. Nightingales are bad enough, grumbling 
all night; but when it comes to yellow birds — 
well." 

"Hello," said a passing tit, "what's the trouble 
now?" 

"Listen !" said the others. 

The tit was all attention for a minute while the 
gay triumphant song went on. 

"Well," he said, "that's a rum go. Novel, I call 
it. What is it?" 

"It's a yellow foreigner," said the chaffinch. 

"What's to be done with it?" the tit asked. 

"There's only one thing for self-respecting 
British birds to do," said the chaffinch. "Stop it." 

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Cloud and Silver 

"Absolutely," said the tit. "I'll go and find some 
others." 

"Yes^ so will we," said the chaffinch; and off 
they all flew, full of righteous purpose. 

^feanwhile the canary sang on and on, and the 
poet at the foot of the elm listened with delight. 

Suddenly, however, he was conscious of a new 
sound, a noisy chirping and harsh squawking 
which seemed to fill the air, and then a great 
cloud of small angry birds assailed the tree. For 
a while the uproar was immense; and then, out 
of the heart of the tumult, pursued almost to the 
ground where the poet stood, fell the body of a 
little yellow bird, pecked to death by a thousand 
avenging furies. 

Seeing the poet, they made off in a pack, still 
shrilling and squawking, conscious of the highest 
rectitude. 

The poet picked up the poor mutilated body. 
It was still warm and it twitched a little, but 
never could its life and music return. 

While he stood thoughtfully there an old 
woman, holding an open cage and followed by 
half a dozen children, hobbled along the path. 

"My canary got away," she said. "Have you 
seen it ? It flew in this direction." 

"I'm afraid I have seen it," said the poet, and 
he opened his hand. 

"My little pet!" said the old woman. "It sang 
so beautifully, and it used to feed from my fingers. 
My little pet." 
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Once Upon a Time 

The poet returned to his work. ** *In tooth and 
claw,' " he muttered to himself. 

VIII Breathing Space 

Once upon a time there was an old pheasant — 
a real veteran who had come victorious out of many- 
battues. Not perhaps wholly unscathed, for his 
tail was no longer the streaming meteoric plume 
that it once had been, but sound in wind and 
limb. 

No one knew his lordship's guests so well as 
he, so often had he seen them in the coverts: 
old Sir Mark, who had an arm-chair at the angle 
of the two best drives; Sir Humphry, with his 
eternal cigarette in the long gold tube; the red- 
faced Colonel, who always shot too late; the 
purple-faced Major, who always shot too soon; 
the smiling agent, who would so tactfully disown 
a bird whenever it seemed politic; and all the rest 
of them. 

How the veteran rocketer had escaped I cannot 
say, but shoot after shoot found him still robust 
and elusive, while his relations were falling all 
around, some, to their dying satisfaction, thudding 
into the features of their assassins. 

One morning three young pheasants came flying 
up to this Nestor in a state of nervous excitement. 

"Quick ! quick !" they said, "the gentlemen are 
leaving the Hall. Tell us where to go to be safe." 

"Go?" said the old bird. "Don't go anywhere. 
Stay where you are." 

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Cloud and Silver 

**But they're coming this way/' said the young 
pheasants. 

"Let them come," said the old bird. "There's 
no danger. Wliy don't you use your ears?" 

"What do you mean.^" they asked. 

"Listen," said the old bird. "What is that 
sound?" 

"It's too gentle for guns," said the young pheas- 
ants meditatively. 

"Yes," said the old bird. "That's church bells. 
No one shoots on Sunday. They're going to play 
golf." 

IX Responsibility 

Once upon a time there was an ostrich who, 
though very ostrichy, was even more of an egoist. 
He thought only of himself. That foible is not 
confined to ostriches, but this particular fowl — 
and he was very particular — was notable for it. 
"Where do I come in?" was a question written 
all over him — from his ridiculous and inadequate 
head, down his long neck, on his plump fluffy 
body, right to his exceedingly flat and over-sized 
feet. 

It was in Afric's burning sand — to be precise, 
at the Cape — that, on the approach of danger, 
the fowl in question secreted his self-centred head, 
and here from time to time his plumes were plucked 
from him for purposes of trade. 

Now it happened that in London there was a 
theatre given up to a season of foreign opera, and, 
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Once Upon a Time 

this theatre having been designed by one of those 
gifted geniuses so common among theatre archi- 
tects, it followed that the balcony (into which, 
of course, neither the architect nor the manager 
for whom it was built had ever strayed) contained 
a number of seats from which no view of the stage 
was visible at all — unless one stood up, and then 
the people behind were deprived of the fraction 
of view that belonged to them, while to move one's 
head to one side or open a programme wide was 
also to cut the line of vision of others. This, of 
course, means nothing to architects or managers. 
The thought that jolly anticipatory parties of 
simple folk bent upon a happy evening may be 
depressed and dashed by a position suffering from 
such disabilities could not concern architects and 
managers, for some imagination would be needed to 
understand it. 

It happened that on a certain very hot night in 
July a fat lady in one of the front seats not only 
moved about but fanned herself intermittently 
with a large fan. 

Now and then one of the unfortunate seat- 
holders behind her remonstrated gently and po- 
litely, remarking on the privation her fan was 
causing to others, and each time the lady smiled 
and said she was very sorry and put the fan down ; 
but in two minutes she was fluttering it again as 
hard as ever, and the stage was again blotted out. 

She meant well, poor lady ; but it was very hot, 
and how could she help it when her fan was made 
of that particular ostrich's feathers.'* 

(159) 



Cloud and Silver 



X Man's Limitations 

Once upon a time there was a trout who lived 
in a stream much frequented by anglers. But 
though he was of some maturity and had in his 
time leapt at many flies, they had always been 
living insects and not the guileful work of man. 
Hence, although well informed on most matters, 
of the hard facts of fishing he knew only what 
he had been told by such of his friends as had 
been hooked and had escaped, and from watching 
the ancient dentist of his tribe at work in his 
surgery, extracting barbs from jaws. For, just as 
children stand at the smithy door watching the 
making of a horseshoe, so do the younger trout 
cluster round the dentist and observe him at his 
merciful task. 

This trout was in his way a bit of a dandy, and 
one of his foibles was to be weighed and measured 
at regular intervals (as a careful man does at his 
Turkish bath), so that he might know how things 
stood with him. Fitness was, in fact, his fetisli ; 
hence, perhaps, his long immunity from such snares 
as half Alnwick exists to dangle before the eyes of 
undiscriminating and gluttonous fish. 

But to each of us, however wise or cautious, a 
day of peril comes soon or late. It happened 
that on the very afternoon on which he had learned 
that he was eleven inches and a quarter long and 
turned the scale at twelve ounces, the trout met 
with a misadventure which not only was his first 
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Once Upon a Time 

but likely to be his last. For seeing a particularly 
appetising-looking fly on the surface of the water, 
and being rather less carefully observant than 
usual, he took it at a gulp, and straightway was 
conscious of a sharp pain in his right cheek and of 
a steady strain on the same part of his person, 
pulling him upwards out of the stream. 

Outraged and in agony, he dashed backwards 
and forwards, kicked and wriggled; but all in 
vain; and at last, worn out and ashamed, he lay 
still and allowed himself to be drawn quietly from 
the water in a net insinuated beneath him. In 
another moment he lay on the bank beneath the 
admiring and excited eyes of a man. 

A pair of hands then seized him and the hook 
was extracted from his right cheek with very 
little tenderness. 

It was at this moment that the trout's good 
fairy came to his aid, for the man in his eager 
delight placed him where the turf sloped. The 
trout saw the friendly stream just below, gathered 
his strength for a last couple of despairing strug- 
gles, and these starting him on the downward 
grade he had splashed into the water again before 
the angler realised his loss. 

For a while the trout lay just where he sank, 
motionless, too exhausted to swim away, listening 
languidly to what was being said about him on 
the bank by the disappointed angler to a friend 
who had joined him. At length, having collected 
enough power, he glided to safety. 

That evening, you may be sure, the trout had 

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Cloud and Silver 

plenty to tell his companions -when, after their 
habit, they discussed the day's events in a little 
crowd. There were several absentees from the 
circle, and two or three fish who were present 
had swollen jaws where hooks had caught and 
broken away; while one actually had to move 
about and eat and talk with a foot of line pro- 
ceeding from his mouth, attached to a hook which 
none of the efforts of the profession had been able 
to dislodge. 

"But the thing that bothers me/' said our trout, 
as he finished the recital of his adventures for the 
tenth time, "is men's curious want of precision. 
For while I was lying there in the water getting 
back my strength, I distinctly heard the fellow 
who had had me in his hands but had lost me, tell- 
ing his friend that I was two feet four if I was an 
inch, and weighed within an ounce or two of three 
pounds." 

XI "East, West, Home's Best" 

Once upon a time there was a little girl who 
was taken to the Zoo by her father. Her father's 
tastes were wholly scientific: he paid several 
guineas a year for the privilege of forgetting to 
give away Sunday tickets; he could add F.Z.S. 
to his name if he liked; and when he went in 
he asked for a pen and wrote his name instead 
of paying a shilling like inferior folk. But the 
little girl was curiously unmoved by the world's 
strange fauna, whether elephants or water-beetles, 
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Once Upon a Time 

and the result was that she followed listlessly and 
fatigued at her father's heels throughout the expe- 
dition^ while with eager eyes he scrutinised this 
odd creature and that: from the very post-impres- 
sionist mandril, now no more, to the distant and 
incredible camelopards. 

The little girl, I say, was listless and fatigued 
— for all but two minutes. For it chanced that 
as they walked in solemn procession through the 
house of the ostriches and the emus and various 
cassowaries named after their discoverers, they 
came to the Patagonian Cavy, and the little girl, 
loitering at his bars, uttered a gasp of delight, for 
there, all unconcerned and greedy, sat a tiny 
English mouse, eating grain. 

The mouse looked at her with its brilliant eyes, 
and nibbled as though there were only two min- 
utes of all time left for refreshment; and, secure 
in the knowledge of the dividing bars, it refused 
even to blink when she flicked her hand at it. She 
never noticed the Patagonian Cavy at all. 

*'What is it? What is it?" her father impa- 
tiently inquired. 

"Hush !" she said. "Do come back and look at 
this darling little mouse." 

"Pooh — a mouse!" said her father, and strode 
on, eager to reach the elusive apteryx. 

"Well," said her mother when the little girl re- 
turned, "and what did you see that pleased you 
best?" and the little girl mentioned the mouse. 

And what of the mouse? "You may call your- 
self a Patagonian Cavy," he remarked later in 

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Cloud and Silver 

the evening, *'but it doesn't follow that you're 
everybody. Did you notice a little girl with a 
blue bonnet this afternoon? Just after tea-time? 
The one that called her father back to have an- 
other look? Well, being a poor benighted Pata- 
gonian, you don't, of course, know what she said, 
but it wasn't what you think it was, oh dear no. 
It wasn't anything about you and your remarkable 
beauty. What she said was, 'Do come back and 
look at this darling little mouse,' which merely," 
the mouse concluded, "again illustrates an old con- 
tention of mine that good taste is not an adult 
monopoly." 

XII Waste 

Once upon a time there were three toadstools. 
They were not the fat brown ones like buns with 
custard underneath, or the rich crimson ones with 
white spots, or the delicate purple ones. They 
were merely small white ones, a good deal more 
like mushrooms than it was quite fair to make 
them. 

They sprang up within a few inches of each 
other, and every moment added to their stature, 
and, as they grew, they discussed life in all its 
branches and planned for themselves distinguished 
careers. . . . 

The eldest was not more than eighteen hours 

old, which is a good age for a toadstool, when an 

angry boy on his way home from the village school 

kicked him into smithereens for not being a mush- 

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Once Upon a Time 

room — which is the toadstool's unpardonable sin. 
The younger brothers^ watching the tragedy, 
vowed to fulfil their destiny with better success 
than that^ and forthwith they prepared a placard 
that ran as follows (in a form of words which 
was not perhaps strictly original) : 



To THE Nobility akd Gektry 

OF TOADLAND. 

YOU WANT THE BEST SEATS. 
WE HAVE THEM. 



Having placed this notice in a prominent position, 
they waited. 

For some time nothing happened, and then an 
extremely portly and aristocratic toad, with eyes 
of burning amber and one of the most decorative 
waistcoats out of Bond Street, waddled towards 
the expectant brothers, read the advertisement, 
and sat heavily down on the nearer of them. I 
need hardly say that the stool was crushed to 
pieces beneath his weight, while the toad himself 
sustained, as the papers say, more than a few 
contusions, and was in a disgusting temper. 

It was not long afterwards that a small girl, 
who had been sent out by her mother to pick mush- 
rooms, added the surviving brother to her basket 
with a little cry of triumph. "What a beauty!'* 
she said, and hurried home with the prize. 

But her mother was very sharp about it. "Do 
you want us all in our graves.'*" she snapped, as 

(165) 



Cloud and Silver 

she picked the toadstool up and flung it into the 
ash-bin. 

"And not even the satisfaction of poisoning any- 
one !" he murmured. 

XIII Nature 

Once upon a time there was a king who failed 
to please his subjects and was in consequence in 
instant peril. Hurriedly collecting together such 
treasures as he could, he and his young queen 
crossed the frontier one night with a few faithful 
retainers and settled in a secluded castle in a 
friendly country. 

On the first wet day the young queen was miss- 
ing. High and low the retainers searched for her, 
and at last she was discovered in the middle of an 
open space in the forest, holding up her face to 
the rain. 

Horror-stricken, they hurried to her aid; but 
she waved them back. 

*'Do let me stay a little longer," she pleaded. 
"All my life I have longed to feel the rain and I 
was never allowed to. All my life there have 
been coaches and umbrellas." 

And again the little queen held up her face to 
the drops. 

XIV The Rule 

Once upon a time there lived and flourished in 
a small city a worthy man. He was devoted to 
his native place; he loved its streets and stones, 
(166) 



Once Upon a Time 

its strange odours, its smoke, its high rates, its 
indifferent water supply, its clubs and cafes and 
everjrthing about it. Nothing could induce him 
to leave it even for the briefest period. In vain 
did the railway companies spread their Holiday 
Arrangements before his eyes; he returned with 
the more satisfaction to his favourite seat over- 
looking the central square. 

And then one day the king of that country, 
who was full of capricious impulses, issued a de- 
cree that no one in this little city should ever 
leave it again. 

And immediately the worthy man began to be 
consumed with a longing for travel. 



XV The Uses of Criticism 

Once upon a time there was an innkeeper who, 
strange to say, was unable to make both ends 
meet. Nothing that he tried was any use: he 
even placed in the windows a notice to the effect 
that his house was "under entirely new manage- 
ment," but that too was in vain. So in despair 
he consulted a wise woman. 

**It is quite simple," she said, as she pocketed 
her fee. "You must change the name of your 
inn." 

"But it has been 'The Golden Lion' for cen- 
turies," he replied. 

"You must change the name," she said. "You 

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Cloud and Silver 

must call it 'The Eight Bells'; and you must 
have a row of seven bells as the sign." 

*'Seven?'* he said; "but that's absurd. What 
will that do?" 

"Go home and see/' said the wise woman. 

So he went home and did as she told him. 

And straightway every wayfarer who was pass- 
ing paused to count the bells, and then hurried 
into the inn to point out the mistake, each appar- 
ently believing himself to be the only one who had 
noticed it, and all wishing to refresh themselves 
for their trouble; motorists, observing the discrep- 
ancy as they flew by, stopped their chauffeurs, 
and, with the usual enormous difficulty, got them 
to go back; and the joke found its way into the 
guide-books. 

The result was that the innkeeper waxed fat, 
lost his health and made his fortune. 



XVI Joints in the Armour 

Once upon a time there was a father of five 
who, living as he did in constant fear of their 
inquiring minds, took home with him a fat volume 
called The Parents' Book, because in the advertise- 
ments it claimed to answer children's questions 
by the thousand. 

"Now, you little demons," he said genially 

that evening, "gather round and do your worst; 

your father's up to any trick. Ask me anything 

you like and I'll give you the answer •" and he 

(168) 



Once Upon a Time 

opened The Parents* Booh. "It is too much to 
hope, dear Eric/' he added, turning to the eldest, 
"that there is nothing that you particularly want 
to know to-day ?" 

"Yes," Eric said with disconcerting quickness, 
"it is, father. What does 'Piccadilly' mean?" 

Now this was something that the father had 
himself always wanted to know, so he turned up 
the index with some satisfaction and more con- 
f:dence. But no "Piccadill3\" Then he turned 
to "London" and was referred to page 491. "Lon- 
don is not only the largest but also the richest and 
busiest city in the world," it began. But nothing 
about Piccadilly at all ! 

Eric retired unsatisfied, and Cuthbert took the 
floor. "Please, father," he said, "what became 
of the wine after the Duke of Clarence was 
drowned in it?" 

No "Clarence" in the index. 

"I expect it was given to the poor," said Cuth- 
bert philosophically, and with the lowest opinion 
of reference books he too retired. 

"Now, Patricia?" the father said to his eldest 
girl. Patricia being' a great reader he expected a 
literary poser. As it happened, he got it. 

"What was the good news brought from Ghent 
to Aix?" she asked. 

The index this time seemed more promising, 
for it gave — 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett . . . 551 
Robert . . . . . .552 

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Cloud and Silver 

but though the poem was mentioned nothing was 
said as to the very reasonable information de- 
sired. 

Patricia therefore withdrew to make room for 
Horace^ who merely asked who discovered that 
eggs had to be boiled. The father knew that it 
was useless to hope for light there, so he gave 
it up at once. "Arising out of that question/' 
Horace therefore added (in his own juvenile 
paraphrase), "may I ask who first boiled a pot?" 
but the learned disquisition on "fire" provided by 
the volume did not go into that. 

Things were getting very bad. Here were four 
of the little brood unanswered and the credit of 
literature was getting desperately thin. 

"Now, Augusta/' he said to the youngest, "can't 
you think of some problem that we — this volume 
and I — can solve for you?' 

"Yes," she said with a suspicious wriggle. 
"Surely, father, more than two fleas got into the 
Ark, didn't they?" 



XVII The Resolute Spirit 

Once upon a time there was in a Suffolk vil- 
age of South Highbolt a Tudor grange. It 
was richly timbered, with vine leaves carved on its 
barge-boards, and it had a great hall with a roof- 
tree springing from a cross-beam of massive stout- 
ness, and a very beautiful pilastered gallery, and 
altogether it was just the house, although damp 
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Once Upon a Time 

and insanitary^ to send poetical travellers into rap- 
tures. But it had come upon evil days, and having 
been bought cheaply by a speculative London 
builder had been sold by him at an enormous profit 
to an American plutocrat, and was now being 
taken down with great care, every brick, stone, and 
beam numbered, to be re-erected in the American 
millionaire's estate on the banks of the Hudson, as 
a garden hostel for his guests, and a perpetual re- 
minder of a country older and more romantic than 
his own. 

It happened that, like most Tudor granges, this 
one was haunted, and had been ever since the year 
1592, when a wealthy heir apparent, named Geof- 
frey, had been poisoned with a dish of toadstools 
by his spendthrift younger brother, more than 
anxious to upset the exasperating financial provi- 
sions of primogeniture, and their sister Alice had 
unconsciously partaken of the same dish. From 
that time onward Alice and Geoffrey, as well as 
could be managed in their disembodied state, had 
devoted themselves to the old home; and you may 
then imagine their dismay on seeing its component 
parts gradually being packed into a series of 
trucks, to be drawn to some distant spot by a 
traction-engine. To demolition pure and simple 
they were accustomed. Many were the neighbour- 
ing mansions, most of them also haunted, which 
they had seen pulled down, and not a few rebuilt; 
but it was a new experience to observe a house 
bodily removed they knew not whither, nor could 
they discover. In vain were other ghosts consulted ; 

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Cloud and Silver 

none knew^ not even the youngest. The point then 
was, what was to be done? for Geoffrey and Alice 
were divided in opinion as to their duty, Alice 
considering that her first allegiance was to the 
structure and its successive imprudent occupants, 
and Geoffrey that his was to the site. 

"It is our family home/' said Alice; "marry, 
we must go with it, no matter whither." 

"Nay, sister," said Geoffrey, "that were foolish. 
We are Suffolk ghosts — more than Suffolk, South 
Highbolt ghosts — and here we ought to stay. Sup- 
pose it is going to London — how then.^ You are 
far too simple and countrified for the great city. 
The others would laugh at you." 

"Let them," said Alice, "I care not." 

"Wait till you hear them," said Geoffrey, "all 
sensitive as you are! Anyway, here I mean to 
stay." 

"But how foolish!" said Alice; "for surely, 
Geoffrey, you would not haunt nothing? What 
use could that be? How can you make nothing 
creak? or blow out candles when there are none? 
or moan along passages that do not exist? or 
wring your hands in South Highbolt at casements 
that are elsewhere?" 

"True," replied Geoffrey, "but I can carry on 
the mechanism of haunting just the same. I can 
gibber where the old home used to stand, as many 
another honest Suffolk ghost, aye, and Essex and 
Norfolk ghosts too, I wis, are doing at this mo- 
ment. I belong to the village and shall stay here. 
I hate travel. No doubt to create anything like 
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Once Upon a Time 

the sensation to which I have been accustomed 
will be difficult, but I can do my best. Even the 
poorest efforts, however, will be better than accom- 
panying a traction-engine along a public road in 
broad day — verily a degrading occupation for the 
unlaid spirit of a fair lady." 

"Circumstances alter cases/' Alice replied. **I 
conceive my duty to be to yonder wood and stone. 
Nothing shall shake me. Wherever they go, there 
shall I go also." 

"And I too," said Geoffrey, "am adamant. 
South Highbolt is my home and never will I de- 
sert it." 

It therefore happened that when the time came 
for the road-train to leave, every vestige of the 
house being packed away, Alice took a tearful 
farewell of her brother and crept dismally into the 
last truck with a bibulous brakesman, and so 
broken was her spirit at leaving home, or such the 
completeness of his potations, that she caused him 
not a single tremor all the way to Harwich, where 
a vessel was waiting to convey the grange to 
America. Not until Alice grasped the fact that a 
sea voyage was before her, and took up her abode 
in the stuffy hold as near to the roof-tree as she 
could nestle, did her courage for the first time begin 
to fail, for she was a bad sailor; but once again 
duty triumphed. . . . 

It was on the first night on which the re-erected 
Tudor grange was opened as a hostel for the mil- 
lionaire's guests that Alice was placed in the de- 
lectable position of realising that the consciousness 

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Cloud and Silver 

of having been virtuous is not always the only re- 
ward of a virtuous deed; for she had not waved 
her arms more than twice^ nor uttered more than 
three blood-curdling shrieks, when Professor 
Uriah K. Bleeter, one of the most determined foes 
of the American Society of Psychical Research 
and all its works, sprang through his bedroom 
window to the ground below, taking with him the 
sash and some dozens of diamond panes. 

And now the Tudor grange is even emptier 
than it had been for so long in England, and the 
millionaire who bought it lives entirely on his 
yacht. 

XVIII In Extremis 

Once upon a time a Nut lay dying. He was 
twenty-five. He had had a good time — too good — 
and the end was near. 

There was no hope, but alleviation was pos- 
sible. "Is there anything," he was asked, "that 
3^ou would like?" 

He was plucky and prepared for the worst. 

"Yes," he said, "I'd like to know what I've 
spent since I was twenty. Could that be ar- 
ranged?" 

"Easily," they said. 

"Good," he replied. "Then tell me what I've 
spent on my bally old stomach — on food." 

"On food," they replied. "We find that you 
have spent on yourself an average of a pound a 
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Once Upon a Time 

day for food. For five years that is, roughly, 
£1825." 

"Roughly ?" said the Nut. 

"Yes. Counting one leap year, it would be 
.£1826. But then you have entertained with some 
freedom, bringing the total to ,£3075." 

"Yes," said the Nut. "And what about 
drinks?" 

"We find," was the reply, "that on drinks your 
average has been three pounds a day, or about 
£5475 in all." 

"Good heavens !" said the Nut. "What a noble 
thirst! And clothes?" 

"The item of clothes comes to £9^0," they said. 

"Only three figures !" said the Nut. "How did 
I come to save that odd £60, I wonder?" 

"Not by any idea of economy," they replied. 
"Merely a want of time." 

"And let's see," said the Nut, "what else does 
one spend money on? Oh yes, taxis. How much 
for taxis?" 

"Your taxis," they said, "work out at seven 
shillings a day, or £639. 2s. Od." 

"And tips?" the Nut inquired. 

"Tips," they said, "come to £456." 

The Nut lay back exhausted, and oxygen was 
administered. He was very near the end. 

"One thing more," he managed to ask. "What 
have I paid in cloak-room fees for my hat and 
stick?" 

"Only £150," they said. 

But it was enough: he fell back dead. 

(175) 



Cloud and Silver 



XIX Progress 

Once upon a time there was a little boy who 
asked his father if Nero was a bad man. 

"Thoroughly bad/' said his father. 

Once upon a time, many years later, there was 
another little boy who asked his father if Nero 
was a bad man. 

"I don't know that one should exactly say that/' 
replied his father: "we ought not to be quite so 
sweeping. But he certainly had his less felicitous 
moments." 

XX Moses 

Once upon a time there dwelt, in the city of 
Paris, in an appartement not very distant from the 
fitoile or Place of the Arc de Triomphe, two little 
boys. They were American boys, and they had 
a French governess. In addition to this they were 
twins, but that has nothing to do with Moses. 
I relate the fact merely to save you the trouble 
of visualising each little boy separately. All that 
you need do is to imagine one and then double 
him. 

Well, after their lessons were done these two 
little boys used to go for a walk with their gov- 
erness in the Champs filysees, or the Pare Mon- 
ceau, or even into the Bois itself, wherever, in fact, 
the long-legged children of Paris take the air; and 
no doubt as they walked they put a thousand 
(176) 



Once Upon a Time 

Ollendorffian questions to Mademoiselle^ who had 
all her work cut out for her in answering, first on 
one side and then on the other. That also has 
nothing to do with the story, except in so far as it 
shows you the three together. 

Well, on one morning in the spring one of the 
little boys saw something tiny struggling in the 
gutter, and, dragging the others to it, he found 
that it was a young bird very near its end. The 
bird had probably fluttered from the nest too 
soon, and nothing but the arrival of the twins 
saved its life. 

"Voila un moineau !" said Mademoiselle, 
"moineau" being the French nation's odd way 
of saying sparrow; and the little creature was 
picked up and carried tenderly home; and since 
sparrows do not fall from the heavens every day 
to add interest to the life of small American boys 
in Paris, this little bird had a royal time. A 
basket was converted into a cage for it and fitted 
with a perch, and food and drink were pressed 
upon it continually. It was indeed the basket 
that was the cause of the bird's name, for as one 
of the twins, who was a considerable Biblical 
scholar, very appositely remarked, "We ought to 
call it Moses because we took it out of the water 
and put it in a thing made of rushes." Moses 
thus gained his name and his place in the estab- 
lishment; and every day he grew not only in 
vigour but in familiarity. After a little while he 
would hop on the twins* fingers; after that he 
proceeded to Mademoiselle's shoulder; and then 

(177) 



Cloud and Silver 

he sat on the desk where the boys did their little 
lessons and played the very dickens with their 
assiduity. 

In short Moses rapidly became the most im- 
portant person in the house. 

And then^ after two or three weeks, the in- 
evitable happened. Some one left a window open, 
and Moses, now an accomplished aviator, flew 
away. All befriended birds do this sooner or 
later, but rarely do they leave behind them such 
a state of grief and desolation as Moses did. The 
light of the twins' life was extinguished, and even 
Mademoiselle, who, being an instructor of youth, 
knew the world and had gathered fortitude, was 
conscious of a blank. 

So far, I am aware, this narrative has not taxed 
credulity. But now comes the turning-point 
where you will require all your powers of belief. 
A week or so after their bereavement, as the 
twins and their governess were out for their walk, 
scanning, according to their new and perhaps only 
half-conscious habit, with eager glances every 
group of birds for their beloved renegade, one 
of them exclaimed, "Look, there's Moses !" 

To most of us one sparrow is exactly like an- 
other, but this little boy's eye, trained by affection, 
did not err, for Moses it truly was. There he was, 
pecking away on the grass with three or four 
companions. 

"Moses!" called the twins; "Moses!" called 
the governess, "Moses ! Moses !" — moving a little 
nearer and nearer all the time. And after a few 
(178) 



Once Upon a Time 

moments' indecision, to their intense rapture Moses 
flew up and settled in his old place on Made- 
moiselle's shoulder and very willingly allowed 
himself to be held and carried home again. 

This is a free country (more or less) and any 
one is at liberty to disbelieve my story and even 
to add that I am an Ananias of peculiar ripeness, 
but the story is true none the less, and very pretty 
too, don't you think? 

And could it, I have been wondering, ever have 
happened had it not been for M. Pol? You know 
M. Pol, of course. M. Pol is that engaging and 
not too dandiacal old gentleman who for years and 
years fed the sparrows, and chaffed them, and 
scolded them, in the gardens of the Tuileries. 
Whether or no he still carries on his gracious work 
I cannot say; he was looking very frail when last 
I saw* him, a little before the war; but is it too 
much to hold that his influence still persists, in 
view of the extraordinary events which I have just 
related, and which, as I said before, are true? 
One must not claim too much for M. Pol or under- 
rate the intelligence of Moses. None the less I 
feel strongly that, had it not been for M. Pol's 
many years of sympathetic intercourse with those 
gamins of the air, the Parisian sparrows, and all 
his success in building that most difficult of bridges 
— the one uniting bird and man — the deeds of 
Moses might never have come before the 
historian. 



(179) 



IN A NEW MEDIUM 
THE OLD country; OR, WRIT IN WAX 

FOR most authors, and indeed all who confide 
themselves to prose and never dabble in words 
for music, the busy bee performs a large part of 
his labours in vain. In other words, they have 
no use for those preparations of wax with which 
gramophone records are made. But now and then 
even a writer of prose is susceptible to aberration, 
and it was during one such mood, not so long ago, 
that the idea came to me to put together some 
couplets which, when repeated by the gramophone 
with certain realistic accessories, might have the 
effect of reminding distant emigrants of the Eng- 
land that they have left, possibly fill them with 
home-sickness, and incidentally be of assistance to 
me in adding butter to bread. 

At the first blush one might say that such a mo- 
tive savoured if not of cupidity at any rate of in- 
humanity; but I believe that people derive more 
pleasure from a pensive melancholy, a brooding, 
lingering wistfulness, than from many positive de- 
lights: and it was this seductive nostalgia that my 
verses were designed to bring to them. 

The suggestion came to me, suddenly, as I list- 
ened in a music hall to a French gentleman in 
(180) 



In a New JVIedium 

evening dress whose special genius lay in the imi- 
tation of birds. Such was the fidelity with which 
he trilled forth the notes of the nightingale on the 
cold January evening on which I heard him, that 
he made the thought of June almost unbearable: 
and upon that pain of my own I resolved to try 
and erect an edifice of not disagreeable unhappi- 
ness in others. 

Talking over the project with one who is behind 
the scenes in Edisonian mysteries, I obtained my 
first glimpses into the rules that govern the activi- 
ties of the talking machine. Possibly these facts 
are commonplaces to the reader; but to me they 
were startling novelties. Each record, he told me, 
has to be of a definite length, of which two minutes 
is the extreme, and whatever words and effects I 
was aiming at must therefore be compressed into 
that space. This meant an instant modification 
of my scheme, for I had planned no more than 
enough material for one minute; and it was then 
that the skylark fluttered into the heavenly choir, 
and the catalogue of the country's charms, as you 
will shortly see, divided itself into day and eve- 
ning. 

The next thing that the expert told me was that 
one must not be too clever. 

Here of course I bowed, murmuring something 
about impossibility. 

By too clever, he went on, without paying any 
attention to my deprecation, he meant too literary. 
The gramophone public was not absurdly discrimi- 
nating: the appeal being through the ear alone, 

(181) 



Cloud and Silver 

and a swift one at that^ there must be no am- 
biguity, no preciosity; each word must do its own 
work, and do it emphatically. 

I agreed, and was conscious again of that feel- 
ing of respect which always comes upon me in the 
presence of one of those rare masterful beings 
who know what the public want. 

"Why not," he went on, "complete the picture.'' 
Call the first part 'The Village,' and then provide 
a city pendant for the other side of the record, so 
that the town-dweller as well as the country- 
dweller may be roped in?" (The italics are his.) 

"Why not indeed.^" I replied. 

"With city effects which will occur to you," he 
said. 

"Of course," said I, and walked thoughtfully 
away, realising once more how dangerous a mat- 
ter is impulse. Why had I ever embarked on this 
scheme? Why had I abandoned my old friend 
prose.'' Why was I flirting with science? . . . 

None the less as I went on I found a certain 
amusement in writing verses for wax, and gradu- 
ally "The Old Country" was finished— Part I. 
The Village, and Part II. The Town — and ready 
to be converted into magic. 

To what extent gramophone recording rooms 
differ I cannot say; but the one in which "The 
Old Country" was prepared is on a top floor in 
the city of London, with large windows through 
which more than one of Wren's spires may be 
seen. In it, when I arrived, were gathered the 
orchestra, the conductor, the chief operator (in a 
(182) 



In a New Medium 

long surgical coat), the elocutionist who was to 
deliver the lines into a metal funnel, the French 
gentleman with an aviary in his throat, my friend 
the expert, and a number of supernumeraries for 
London's cries and tumult — some of which indeed 
we could then hear by opening the window, but 
not loudly enough for our dramatic purpose. 

Every one seemed composed and at peace with 
the world, except the elocutionist, who paced the 
floor muttering my poor verses over to himself in 
an agony that did me no credit; myself, who 
could not but be infected by his distress; and 
the French gentleman, who wandered disconso- 
lately among the company, talking to no one, but 
occasionally refreshing his memory as to the dif- 
ferences of note between the two birds he was 
engaged to reproduce : certainly an important point 
to settle definitely before we began. 

Of the gramophone itself nothing was visible, 
for the recording was done behind the partition. 
Penetrating thither, I found that it consists of 
nothing but a revolving disk of yellowish brown 
wax, into which a needle, vibrating to the elocu- 
tionist's voice and my wonderful poetry, was to 
plough furrows, throwing up a churning wake of 
gossamer shavings as it did so; these furrows, 
which are of every shade of depth, by Edisonian 
black art registering and subsequently giving forth 
again my exact syllables for all the world to hear. 
But how or why I shall never understand. 

I have vague recollections of an explanatory 
lecture on the subject from the chief operator; 

(183) 



Cloud and Silver 

but science being a sealed book to me, I can pass 
none of its secrets on. The telephone and the 
telegraph, the Marconigraph and the automatic 
piano-player, will never be anything but the dark- 
est enigmas ; and almost before any of them comes, 
for marvellousness, the gramophone. But to the 
chief operator in his surgical coat its simplicity is 
a matter for laughter. So different are we all! 
Of such variety is human intelligence! 

The three or four rehearsals, for time signals 
and so forth, being completed, we began. This 
was the procedure. First, absolute silence. Then 
the electric lamp on the operator's partition turn- 
ing to red, the orchestra played a bar or so of 
"Home, Sweet Home," into which the elocutionist, 
who had now taken off not only his coat but his 
collar, for the better grappling with my muse, 
broke with the following lines: 

O England, country of my heart's desire, 
Land of the hedgerow and the village spire, 
Land of thatched cottages and murmuring bees. 
And wayside inns where one may take one's ease, 
Of village greens where cricket may be played. 
And fat old spaniels sleeping in the shade — 
O homeland, far away across the main, 
How would I love to see your face again! — 
Your daisied meadows and your grassy hills, 
Your primrose banks, your parks, your tinkling rills, 
Your copses where the purple bluebells grow, 
Your quiet lanes where lovers loiter so, 
Your cottage-gardens with their wallflowers' scent, 
Your swallows 'neath the eaves, your sweet content! 
And 'mid the fleecy clouds that o'er you spread, 
Listen, the skylark singing overhead . . . 
(184) 



In a New Medium 

It was here that my part of the production be- 
gan, for the French gentleman, whose understand- 
ing of the whole matter seemed still exceedingly 
misty, in spite of rehearsals and instructions, had 
been placed wholly in my charge, and at the given 
moment I was to lead him as close as might be to 
the funnel, tap him, as agreed, on the shoulder, 
and thus let loose his skylark. Had there been 
no other bird, all would have been simple, but the 
presence also of the nightingale, in the same 
receptacle, was an embarrassment; and twice 
through nervousness he liberated the wrong 
chorister, and we had to begin again, while once I 
myself ruined an otherwise perfect record by ex- 
claiming, when I thought it all over, ''Bravo !" 
and slapping the French gentleman's back — ^this 
unfortunate remark attaching itself inseparably to 
the recitation. 

It was not, I ought to saj'-, exactly at the end of 
the verse that the skylark was to begin; but at 
the word "spread," the last line being spoken 
through the bird's notes. After that the blithe 
spirit had it all its own way for about ten seconds, 
when I tapped Monsieur sharply once more and 
drew him swiftly and silently away, while the 
reciter took his place at the funnel and with a 
sigh of satisfaction completed the first verse with 
these words: 

That's the old country, that's the old home! 
You never fore-et it wherever you roam. 

(185) 



Cloud and Silver 

Instantly the orchestra plunged into the opening 
of "The Swanee River/' and again the reciter 
began, while I clung to the French gentleman in 
an agony, for the only expression on his counte- 
nance was one of determination to be a nightingale, 
whereas that on no account must he become until 
the words "they and 1," almost at the end. With 
my arm firmly through his I awaited in a cold 
perspiration the cue. Here is the second verse: 

I know an English village O so small! 
Where every cottage has a whitewashed wall, 
And every garden has a sweetbriar hedge. 
And there's a cat on every window ledge. 
And there's a cottage there with those within it 
Whom I in fancy visit every minute. 

little village mine, so far away. 
How would I love to visit you to-day! 

To lift the latch and peep within the door 
And join the happy company once more — 

1 think I'd try and catch them at their tea: 
What a surprise for every one 'twould be! 
How we would talk and laugh, maybe and cry. 
Living our lost years over, they and I, 

And then at dusk I'd seek the well-known lane 
To hear the English nightingale again. 

This time all went well. At "they and I" the 
nightingale broke in and continued until the con- 
cluding rounding-up couplet: 

That's the old country, that's the old home! 
You never can beat it wherever you roam. 

So much for Part I. The Village. It was the 
end too of the French gentleman, at any rate for 
(186) 



In a New Medium 

a whilcj and he went off to wet one or more of 
his many whistles^ while the supernumeraries 
gathered together with designs on city illusion. 
One (a minute Osborne cadet, who appeared mys- 
teriously from nowhere) carried a motor horn; 
another, a fire bell; another, a policeman's call; 
and a fourth, a wooden rattle which, when turned 
slowly, made a series of cracks resembling shots 
in a rifle saloon. 

All being ready, we froze into silence and 
awaited the incarnadining of the lamp. Then one 
of the musicians struck Big Ben's chimes on a 
series of metal pipes, the orchestra followed with 
a bar or so of "Sally in our Alley," and the elocu- 
tionist plunged into Part II. The Town: 

O London, once my home but now so far, 

You shine before me brighter than a star! 

By night I dream of you, by day I long 

To be the humblest even of your throng: 

Happy, however poor, however sore. 

Merely because a Londoner once more. 

Your sights, your sounds, your scents — I miss them all: 

Your coloured buses racing down Whitehall; 

The fruit stalls in the New Cut all aflare; 

The Oval with its thousands gathered there; 

The Thames at evening in a mist of blue; 

Old Drury with a hundred yards of queue. 

Your sausage shops, your roads of gleaming mud, 

Your pea-soup fogs — they're in my very blood; 

And there's no music to my ear so sweet 

As all the noisy discord of the street. 

At these words the reciter stepped aside and 
conceded the funnel to bus conductors shouting 

(187) 



Cloud and Silver 

"Higher up !'* policemen ordering people to move 
on, newspaper boys with "All the Winners !" and 
costermongers noisily commending fruit; while in 
the background the Osborne cadet pinched the 
motor horn without mercy. At a signal, peace 
suddenly was restored, and 

That's my dear London, that's my old home, 
I'll never forget it wherever I roam, 

said the elocutionist. 

For the introductory bars of the second verse 
I had wanted "The Old Bull and Bush/' but copy- 
right difficulties intervening, we had to fall back 
upon "There is a tavern in the town," with which 
these words merged: 

And ah! the London pleasure parties too! — 
The steamboat up to Hampton Court or Kew; 
The walk amonjr the deer in Richmond Park; 
The journey back, all jolly, in the dark! 
To Epping Forest up the Mile End Road, 
Passing the donkey barrows' merry load; 
Or nearer home, to Hampstead for a blow: 
To watch old London smouldering below; 
Between the Spaniards and Jack Straw's to pace 
And feel the northern breezes in one's face; 
Then at the Bull and Bush perhaps to dine 
And taste again their famous barley wine! 
Ah me! I wonder is it all the same? 
Is Easter Monday still the good old game? 
I hear it yet, though years have rolled away, 
The maddening medley of Bank Holiday. 

Here came our greatest effect at realism. The 
band broke into a typical roundabout waltz, 

(188) 



In a New Medium 

through which rifles snapped^ whistles blew, cocoa- 
nut-shy men exhorted you to roll, bowl, or pitch, 
and a showman bellowed forth the importance of 
visiting a fat lady. And with the words: 

That's my dear London, that's my true home, 
rU never forget it wherever I roam, 

the record was complete. 

What New Zealand and Australia, Johannes- 
burg and the Yukon think of it, I have yet to 
learn. Nor has the butter begun to blossom on 
the bread. But it was great fun. 



THE END 



(189) 



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